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MYSTICISM 





MYSTICISM 


A STUDY 
IN THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
MAN’S SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 


BY 


EVELYN UNDERHILL 


AUTHOR OF “THE GREY WORLD,” “THE COLUMN OF DUST,” ETC, 


NEW YorK /'1| 
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Lume é lasst, che visibile face 
lo Creatore a quella creatura 
che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. 


PAR. xxx. I00 


‘When love has carried us above all things . .. we receive in 
peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfoiding us and penetrating us. 
What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, 
and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that which we are, and 
we are that which we behold; because our being, without losing . 
anything of its own personality, is united with the Divine Truth.” 


RUYSBROECK 


‘*Man is the meeting-point of various stages of Reality.” 
RUDOLPH EUCKEN 


PREFACE 


HIS book falls naturally into two parts; each of which 
is really complete in itself, though they are in a sense 
complementary to one another. Whilst the second 
and longest part contains a somewhat detailed study of the 
nature and development of man’s spiritual or mystical con- 
sciousness, the first is intended rather to provide an introduction 
to the general subject of mysticism, Exhibiting it by turns 
from the point of view of metaphysics, psychology, and 
symbolism, it is an attempt to gather between the covers or 
one volume information at present scattered amongst many 
monographs and text-books written in divers tongues, and to 
give the student in a compact form at least the elementary facts 
in regard to each of those subjects which are most closely con- 
nected with the study of the mystics. 

Those mystics, properly speaking, can only be studied in 
their works: works which are for the most part left unread by 
those who now talk much about mysticism. Certainly the general 
reader has this excuse, that the masterpieces of mystical litera- 
ture, full of strange beauties though they be, offer considerable 
difficulties to those who come to them unprepared. In the 
first seven chapters of this book I have tried to remove a few of 
these difficulties ; to provide the necessary preparation ; and to 
exhibit the relation in which mysticism stands to other forms of 
life. If, then, the readers of this section are enabled by it to 
come to the encounter of mystical literature with a greater 
power of sympathetic comprehension than they previously 
possessed, it will have served the purpose for which it has been 
composed. 


It is probable that almost every such reader, according to 
vii 


viii MYSTICISM 


the angle from which he approaches the subject, will here find a 
good deal which seems to him superfluous. But different types 
of mind will find this unnecessary elaboration in different places. 
The psychologist, approaching from the scientific standpoint, 
eager for morbid phenomena, has little use for disquisitions on 
symbolism, religious or other. The symbolist, approaching 
from the artistic standpoint, seldom admires the proceedings of 
psychology. I believe, however, that none who wish to obtain 
an idea of mysticism in its wholeness, as a form of life, can 
afford to neglect any of the aspects on which these pages venture 
to touch. The metaphysician and the psychologist are unwise 
if they do not consider the light thrown upon the ideas of the 
mystics by their attitude towards orthodox theology. The 
theologian is still more unwise if he refuse to hear the evidence 
of psychology. For the benefit of those whose interest in 
mysticism is chiefly literary, and who may care to be provided 
with a clue to the symbolic and allegorical element in the 
writings of the contemplatives, a short sectionon those symbols 
of which they most often make use has been added. Finally 
the persistence amongst us of the false opinion which confuses 
mysticism with occult philosophy and psychic phenomena, has 
made it necessary to deal with the vital distinction which exists 
between it and every form of magic. 

Specialists in any of these great departments of knowledge 
will probably be disgusted by the elementary and superficial 
manner in which their specific sciences are here treated. But 
this book does not venture to address itself to specialists, 
From those who are already fully conversant with the matters 
touched upon, it asks the indulgence which really kindhearted 
adults are always ready to extend towards the efforts of 
youth. Philosophers are earnestly advised to pass over the first 
two chapters, and theologians to practise the same charity in 
respect of the section dealing with their science. 

The giving of merely historical information is no part of the 
present plan: except in so far as chronology has a bearing upon 
the most.fascinating of all histories, the history of the spirit of 
man. Many books upon mysticism have been based on the 
historical method: amongst them two such very different works 





PREFACE ix 


as Vaughan’s supercilious and unworthy “Hours with the 
Mystics” and Dr. Inge’s scholarly Bampton lectures. It is a 
method which seems to be open to some objection: since 
mysticism avowedly deals with the individual not as he stands 


in relation to the civilization of his time, but as he stands in \ | 


relation to truths that are timeless. All mystics, said Saint-_ 
Martin, speak the same language and come from the same 
country. As against that fact, the place which they happen 
to occupy in the kingdom of this world matters little. 
Nevertheless, those who are unfamiliar with the history of 
mysticism properly so called, and to whom the names 
of the great contemplatives convey no accurate suggestion 
of period or nationality, may be glad to have a short state- 
ment of their order in time and distribution in space. Also, 
some knowledge of the genealogy of mysticism is desirable if 
we are to distinguish the original contributions of each indi- 
vidual from the mass of speculation and statement which he 
inherits from the past. Those entirely unacquainted with these 
matters may find it helpful to glance at the Appendix before 
proceeding to the body of the work ; since few things are more 
disagreeable than the constant encounter of persons to whom 
we have not been introduced. 

The second part of the book, for which the first seven 
chapters are intended to provide a preparation, is avowedly 
psychological. It is an attempt to set out and justify a definite 
theory of the nature of man’s mystical consciousness: the 
necessary stages of organic growth through which the typical 
mystic passes, the state of equilibrium towards which he tends. 
Each of these stages—and also the characteristically mystical 
| and still largely mysterious experiences of visions and voices, 
| contemplation and ecstasy—though viewed from the standpoint 
of psychology, is illustrated from the lives of the mystics ; and 
| where possible in their own words. In planning these chapters 
| I have been considerably helped by M. Delacroix’s brilliant 
| “Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” though unable to accept his con- 
) clusions: and here gladly take the opportunity of acknowledg- 
ing my debt to him and also to Baron von Hiigel’s classic 
“ Mystical Element of Religion.” This book, which only came 


x MYSTICISM 


into my hands when my own was planned and partly written, 
has since been a constant source of stimulus and encourage- 
ment. 

Finally, it is perhaps well to say something as to the exact 
sense in which the term “ Mysticism” is here understood. One 
of the most abused words in the English language, it has been 
used in different and often mutually exclusive senses by 
religion, poetry, and philosophy: has been claimed as an excuse 
for every kind of occultism, for dilute transcendentalism, vapid 
symbolism, religious or zsthetic sentimentality, and bad meta- 
physics. On the other hand, it has been freely employed asa 
term of contempt by those who have criticized these things. It 
is much to be hoped that it may be restored sooner or later to 
its old meaning, as the science or art of the spiritual life. 

Meanwhile, those who use the term “ Mysticism” are bound 
in self-defence to explain what they mean by it. Broadly 
speaking, I understand it to be the expression of the innate 
tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with 
the transcendental order ; whatever be the theological formula 
under which that order is understood. This tendency, in great 
mystics, gradually captures the whole field of consciousness ; it 
dominates their life and, in the experience called “ mystic 
union,” attains its end. Whether that end be called the God of 
Christianity, the World-soul of Pantheism, the Absolute of 
Philosophy, the desire to attain it and the movement towards it 
—so long as this is a genuine life process and not an intellectual 
speculation—is the proper subject of mysticism. I believe this 
movement to represent the true line of development of the 
highest form of human consciousness, 

It is a pleasant duty to offer my heartiest thanks to the 
many kind friends and fellow students, of all shades of opinion, 
who have given me their help and encouragement. Amongst 
those to whom my heaviest debt of gratitude is due are Mr. W. | 
Scott Palmer, for much valuable, generous, and painstaking 
assistance, particularly in respect of the chapter upon Vitalism : 
and Miss Margaret Robinson, who in addition to many other 
kind offices, has made all the translations from Meister Eckhart 
and Mechthild of Magdeburg here given. 


PREFACE x] 


Sections of the MS. have been kindly read by the Rev. Dr. 
Inge, by Miss May Sinclair, and by Miss Eleanor Gregory ; 
from all of whom I have received much helpful and expert 
advice. To Mr. Arthur Symons my thanks and those of my ~ 
readers are specially due; since it is owing to his generous per- 
mission that I am able to make full use of his beautiful trans- 
lations of the poems of St. John of the Cross. Others who have 
given me much help in various directions, and to whom most 
grateful acknowledgments are here offered, are Miss Constance 
Jones, Miss Ethel Barker, Mr. J. A. Herbert of the British 
Museum—who first brought to my notice the newly discovered 
“Mirror of Simple Souls”—the Rev. Dr. Arbuthnot Nairn, 
Mr. A. E. Waite, and Mr. H. Stuart Moore, F.S.A. The sub- 
stance of two chapters—those upon “The Characteristics of 
Mysticism ” and “ Mysticism and Magic”—has already appeared 
in the pages of Zhe Quest and The Fortnightly Review. 
These sections are here reprinted by kind permission of their 
respective editors, 

on: 
Feast of St. John of the Cross 
1910 


NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION 


IN revising this edition for the press I have availed myself of 
suggestions made by several friendly critics: above all, by the 
Baron von Hiigel, to whom I here tender my most grateful 
thanks. 

November 1911 E. U. 


Ps) ot J ania i Ma hea 
Mega veesatst ID % 
i, GOT yyy BY oni em ah qld 


yh Ft nae aN 


? ‘e 
not has 
5 A toa! ie 


hye oe Hh ae 
cut ones cali 


AN 
vo "Wh 
q ‘ith 
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heathy ‘ 7 
a ty yee a ‘ hes yh 


Wy of 


ny ema putin | 


7, Aa a * } b Wa Ot if ne 
Mee i et 





CONTENTS 


PART I 


THE MYSTIC FACT 


PAGE 


PREFACE . s ® ° ® ° P eerie 
CHAPTER I 

THE POINT OF DEPARTURE : A : ‘ : . 3 
CHAPTER II 

MYSTICISM AND VITALISM ; p : D a a80 


CHAPTER III 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY . 2 : sowie 
CHAPTER IV 

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM . : ; Se 
CHAPTER V 

MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY. ; Seana nite 
CHAPTER VI 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 149 


s 
+ 
> 


xiv MYSTICISM 


CHAPTER VII 
PAGE 
MYSTICISM AND MAGIC . ° : : ‘ : wliye 


PART II 


THE MYSTIC WAY 


CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY . ° ; : ‘ : » 203 


CHAPTER II 
THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF. ; ° : : » 213 


CHAPTER III 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF , . : « 239 
CHAPTER IV 

THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF . « : , . 279 
CHAPTER V 

VOICES AND VISIONS . . . ° e » 319 


CHAPTER VI 
INTROVERSION. PART I. RECOLLECTION AND QUIET a Dee 


CHAPTER VII 
INTROVERSION. PART I], CONTEMPLATION . . - 392 


CHAPTER Vill | 
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE . . e e ° oe 427 


CHAPTER IX i 
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL ‘ , : 


. 
_ 
ia wt 


° 
Seine ce 


CONTENTS ee 


CHAPTER X 
PAGE 
THE UNITIVE LIFE : A j . ° » 494 
CONCLUSION : : : i 3 yest 
APPENDIX 


A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EUROPEAN MYSTICISM FROM THE 
BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE DEATH OF 


BLAKE. e ‘ ‘ * * « e 2 541 
BIBLIOGRAPHY ' . . : » 563 
INDEX . ‘ ° ° ‘ : : ‘ - §87 





PART ONE 


THE MYSTIC FACT 


“‘What the world, which truly knows zothing, calls ‘ mysticism’ 
is the science of w/#mates, . . . the science of self-evident Reality, 
which cannot be ‘reasoned about,’ because it is the object of pure 
reason or perception. The Babe sucking its mother’s breast, and 
the Lover returning, after twenty years’ separation, to his home and 
food in the same bosom, are the types and princes of Mystics.” 


COVENTRY PATMORE, 
‘The Rod, the Root, and the Flower” 


ao 





AN INTRODUCTION TO 
MYSTICISM 


CHAPTER I 
THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 


The mystic type—its persistence—Man’s quest of Truth—The Mystics claim to 
have attained it—The foundations of experience—The Self—its sensations—its con- 
cepts—The sense-world—its unreal character—Philosophy—its classic theories of 
Reality—Naturalism—its failures—Idealism—its limitations—Philosophic Scepticism 
—the logical end of Intellectualism—Failure of philosophy and science to discover 
Reality—Emotional and spiritual experience—its validity—Religion—Suffering— 
Beauty—Their mystical aspects—Mysticism as the science of the Real—lIts state- 
ments—its practice—It claims direct communion with the Absolute 


Ae most highly developed branches of the human 


family have in common one peculiar characteristic. 

They tend to produce—sporadically it is true, and 
usually in the teeth of adverse external circumstances—a curious 
and definite type of personality ; a type which refuses to be 
satisfied with that which other men call experience, and is 
inclined, in the words of its enemies, to “deny the world in 
order that it may find reality.” We meet these persons in the 
east and the west; in the ancient, mediaeval, and modern 
worlds... Their one passion appears to be the prosecution of a 
certain spiritual and intangible quest: the finding of a “way 
out” or.a‘“‘ way back” to some desirable state in which alone 
they can satisfy their craving for absolute truth. This quest, 
for them, has constituted the whole meaning of life: they have 
made for it without effort sacrifices which have appeared 
enormous to other men: and it is an indirect testimony to its 
objective actuality, that whatever the place or period in which 

3 


4 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


they have arisen, their aims, doctrines and methods have been 
substantially the same. Their experience, therefore, forms a 
body of evidence, curiously self-consistent and often mutually 
explanatory, which must be taken into account before we can 
add up the sum of the energies and potentialities of the human 
spirit, or reasonably speculate on its relations to the unknown 
world which lies outside the boundaries of sense. 

All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with 
the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has 
been but a passing passion: they have early seen its hopeless- 
ness and turned to more practical things. But there are others 
who remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though 
the manner of their love, the vision which they make unto 
themselves of the beloved object, varies enormously. Some see 
Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: a figure adorable yet intangible, 
found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems 
rather an evil yet an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demand- 
ing payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have 
seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some 
before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists 
have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may 
best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philo- 
sophic sceptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by 
assuring himself that his mistress is not really there. 

Under whatsoever symbols they may have objectified their 
quest, none of these seekers have ever been able to assure the 
world that they have found, seen face to face, the Reality 
behind the veil. But if we may trust the reports of the mystics 
—and they are reports given with a strange accent of certainty 
and good faith—they have succeeded where all these others 
have failed, in establishing immediate communication between 
the spirit of man, entangled as they declare amongst material 
things, and that “ only Reality,” that immaterial and final Being, 
which some philosophers call the Absolute, and most theo- 
logians call God. This, they say—and here many who are 
not mystics agree with them—is the hidden Truth which is the 
object of man’s craving ; the only satisfying goal of his quest. 
Hence, they should claim from us the same attention that we 
give to other explorers of countries in which we are not com- 
petent to adventure ourselves; for the mystics are the pioneers 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 5 


of the spiritual world, and we have no right to deny validity to 
their discoveries, merely because we lack the opportunity or the 
courage necessary to those who would prosecute such explora- 
tions for themselves. ; 

It is the object of this book to attempt a description, and 
also—though this is needless for those who read that description 
in good °faith—a justification of these experiences and the 
conclusions which have been drawn from them. So remote, 
however, are these matters from our ordinary habits of thought, 
that their investigation entails, in all those who would attempt 
to understand them, a certain definite preparation: a purging of 
the intellect. As with those who came of old to the Mysteries, 
purification is here the gate of knowledge. We must come to 
this encounter with minds cleared of prejudice and convention, 
must deliberately break with our inveterate habit of taking the 
“visible world” for granted; our lazy assumption that somehow 
science is “real” and metaphysics is not. We must pull down 
our own card houses—descend, as the mystics say, “into our 
nothingness ”—and examine for ourselves the foundations of all 
possible human experience, before we are in a position to 
criticize the buildings of the visionaries, the poets, and the saints. 
We must not begin to talk of the unreal world of these dreamers 
until we have discovered—if we can—a real world with which it 
may be compared. 

Such a criticism of reality is of course the business of 
philosophy. I need hardly say that this book is not written by 
a philosopher, nor is it addressed to students of that imperial 
science. Nevertheless, amateurs though we be, we cannot reach 
our proper starting-point without trespassing to some extent on 
philosophic ground. That ground covers the whole area of first 
_ principles: and it is to first principles that we must go, if we 
would understand the true significance of the mystic type. 

Let us then begin at the beginning: and remind ourselves 
of a few of the trite and primary facts which all practical persons 
agree to ignore. That beginning, for human thought, is of 
course the I, the Ego, the self-conscious subject which is writing 
this book, or the other self-conscious subject which is reading 
it; and which declares, in the teeth of all arguments, I AM. 


* Even this I AM, which has seemed safe ground to most metaphysicians, is of 
course combated by certain schools of philosophy. ‘* The word Szm,’’ said Eckhart 


6 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Here is a point as to which we all feel quite sure. No meta- 
physician has yet shaken the ordinary individual’s belief in his 
own existence. The uncertainties only begin for most of us 
when we ask what else zs. 

To this I, this conscious self “imprisoned in the body like 
an oyster in his shell,” come, as we know, a constant stream of 
messages and experiences. Chief amongst these are the 
stimulation of the tactile nerves whose result we call touch, the 
vibrations taken up by the optic nerve which we call light, and 
those taken up by the ear and perceived as sound. 

What do these experiences mean? The first answer of the 
unsophisticated Self of course is, that they indicate the nature 
of the external world: it is to the “ evidence of her senses ” that 
she turns, when she is asked what that world is like. From the 
messages received through those senses, which pour in on her 
whether she will or no, batter upon her gateways at every 
instant and from every side, she constructs that “sense-world’ 
which is the “real and solid world” of normal men. As the 
impressions come in—or rather those interpretations of the 
original impressions which her nervous system supplies—she 
pounces on them, much as players in the spelling-game pounce 
on the separate letters dealt out to them. She sorts, accepts, 
rejects, combines: and then triumphantly produces from them 
a “concept” which zs, she says, the external world. With an 
enviable and amazing simplicity she attributes her own sensa- 
tions to the unknown universe. The stars, she says, ave 
bright; the grass zs green. For her, as for the philosopher 
Hume, “reality consists in impressions and ideas.” 

It is immediately apparent, however, that this sense-world, 
this seemingly real external universe—though it may be useful 
and valid in other respects—cannot be 7he external world, but 
only the Self’s projected picture of it.2 It is a work of art, not 


long ago, ‘‘can be spoken by no creature but by God only: for it becomes the 
creature to testify of itself Mon Sum.’’ In a less mystical strain Lotze, and after 
him Bradley and other modern writers, have devoted much destructive criticism to the 
concept of the Ego as the starting-point of philosophy : looking upon it as a large, 
and logically unwarrantable, assumption. 

* Plato, Phaedrus, § 250. 

? Thus Eckhart, ‘‘ Every time that the powers of the soul come into contact with 
created things, they receive and create images and likenesses from the created thing - 
and absorb them. In this way arises the soul’s knowledge of created things. 


{ 


{ 
/ 


i 
} 


| 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 7 


a scientific fact ; and, whilst it may well possess the profound 
significance proper to great works of art, is dangerous if treated 
as a subject of analysis. Very slight investigation will be 
enough to suggest that it is a picture whose relation to reality 
is at best symbolic and approximate, and which would have no 


_ meaning for selves whose senses, or channels of communication, 


happened to be arranged upon a different plan. The evidence 
of the senses, then, cannot safely be accepted as evidence of the 
nature of ultimate reality: useful servants, they are dangerous 
guides. Nor can their testimony disconcert those seekers 
whose reports they appear to contradict. 

The conscious self sits, so to speak, at the receiving end 
of a telegraph wire. On any other theory than that of 
mysticism, it is her one channel of communication with the 
hypothetical “external world.” The receiving instrument 
registers certain messages. She does not know, and—so long 
as she remains dependent on that instrument—never can 
know, the object, the reality at the other end of the wire, 
by which those messages are sent; neither can the messages 
truly disclose the nature of that object. But she is justified 
on the whole in accepting them as evidence that something 
exists beyond herself and her receiving instrument. It is 
obvious that the structural peculiarities of the telegraphic 
instrument will have exerted a modifying effect upon the 
message. That which is conveyed as dash and dot, colour 
and shape, may have been received in a very different form. 
Therefore this message, though it may in a partial sense be 
relevant to the supposed reality at the other end, can never 
be adequate to it. There will be fine vibrations which it 
fails to take up, others which it confuses together. Hence a 
portion of the message is always lost; or, in other language, 
there are aspects of the world which we can never know. 

The sphere of our possible intellectual knowledge is thus 
strictly conditioned by the limits of our own personality. On 


Created things cannot come nearer to the soul than this, and the soul can only 


| approach created things by the voluntary reception of images. And it is through the 
_ presence of the image that the soul approaches the created world : for ¢he image ts a 


Thing, which the soul creates with her own powers. Does the soul want to know the 
nature of a stone—a horse—a man? She forms an image.’’—Meister Eckhart, 
Pred. i. (‘‘ Mystische Schriften,” p. 15). 


8 AN. INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


this basis, not the ends of the earth, but the external termini 
of our own sensory nerves, are the termini of our explora- 
tions: and to “know oneself” is really to know one’s 
universe, We are locked up with our receiving instruments: 
we cannot get up and walk away in the hope of seeing 
whither the lines lead. Eckhart’s words are still final for 
us: “the soul can only aK toi created things by the 
voluntary reception of images.” Did some mischievous 
Demiurge choose to tickle our sensory a ase in a new 


a 


a 


‘The late Professor James once suggested as a_ useful 
exercise for young idealists a consideration of the changes 
which would be worked in our ordinary world if the various 
branches of our receiving instruments happened to exchange 
duties; if, for instance, we heard all colours and saw all 
sounds. Such a remark as this throws a sudden light on 
the strange and apparently insane statement of the visionary 
Saint-Martin, “I heard flowers that sounded, and saw notes 
that shone”; and on the reports of certain other mystics 
concerning a rare moment of consciousness in which the 
senses are fused into a single and ineffable act of percep- 
tion; and colour and sound are known as aspects of the 
same thing.t 

Since music is but an interpretation of certain vibrations 
undertaken by the ear, and colour an interpretation of other 
vibrations performed by the eye, all this is less mad than 
it sounds. Were such an alteration of our senses to take 
place the world would still be sending us the same messages 
—that strange unknown world from which, on this hypothesis, 
we are hermetically sealed—but we should have interpreted 
them differently. Beauty would still be ours, though speaking 
another tongue. The bird’s song would then strike our retina 
as a pageant of colour: we should see all the magical tones 
of the wind, hear as a great fugue the repeated and harmonized 
greens of the forest, he cance of stormy sos Dida 
realize how slight an adjustment of 6tif Own organs is needed 


to initiate us into such a world, we should perhaps be less 


* Thus Edward Carpenter says of his own experience of the onset of mystical 
consciousness, ‘‘ The perception seems to be one in which all the senses unite into - 
one sense”’ (quoted in Bucke’s ‘‘ Cosmic Consciousness,” p. 198). 


\ 
\ 
\ 


\ 
THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 9 


contemptuous of those mystics who tell us that they appre- 
hended the Absolute as “heavenly music” or ‘“ Uncreated 
Light”: less fanatical in our determination to make the 
“real and solid world of common sense” the only standard 
of reality. This “world of common sense” is a conceptual 
world. It may represent an external universe: it certainly 
does represent the activity of the human mind. Within 
that mind it is built up: and there most of us are content 
“at ease for aye to dwell,” like the soul in the Palace of Art. 

A direct encounter with absolute truth, then, appears to 
be impossible for normal non-mystical consciousness. We 
cannot know the reality, or even prove the existence, of the 
simplest object: though this is a limitation which few people 
realize acutely and most would strenuously deny. But there 
persists in the race a type of personality which does realize 
this limitation : and cannot be content with the sham realities 
that furnish the universe of normal men. It is necessary, as 
it seems, to the comfort of persons of this type to form 
for themselves some image of the Something or Nothing 
which is at the end of their telegraph lines: some “ conception 
of being,’ some “theory of knowledge.” They are tormented 
by the Unknowable, ache for first principles, demand some 
background to the shadow show of things. In so far as man 
possesses this temperament, he hungers for reality, and must 
satisfy that hunger as best he can: staving off starvation, 
though he may not be filled. 

Now it is doubtful whether any two selves have offered 
themselves exactly the same image of the truth outside their 
gates: for a living metaphysic, like a living religion, is at 
bottom a strictly personal affair—a matter, as Professor James 
reminded us, of vision rather than of argument.t Nevertheless 
such a living metaphysic may—and if sound generally does— 
escape the stigina of subjectivism by outwardly attaching itself > 
to a traditional School; as personal religion may and should 
outwardly attach itself to a traditional church. Let us then 
consider shortly the results arrived at by these traditional 
schools—the great classic theories concérning the nature of 
reality. In them we see crystallized the best that the human 
intellect, left to itself, has been able to achieve. 


* * A Pluralistic Universe,” p. 10. 


; 
7 
f 


/ 
f 


10 - AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


I. The most obvious and most generally accepted ex- 
planation of the world is of course that of MWaturalism or 
Realism: the point of view at once of the plain man and 
of physical science. Naturalism states simply that we see 
the real world, though we may not see it very well. What 
seems to normal healthy people to be there, is approximately 
there. It congratulates itself on resting in the concrete; it 
accepts material things as real. In other words, our corrected 
and correlated sense impressions, raised to their highest point 
of efficiency, form for it the only valid material of knowledge: 
knowledge itself being the classified results of exact observation. 

Now such an attitude as this may be a counsel of 
prudence, in view of our ignorance of all that lies beyond: 
but it can never satisfy our hunger for reality. It says in 
effect, “ The room in which we find ourselves is fairly com- 
fortable. Draw the curtains, for the night is dark: and let 
us devote ourselves to describing the furniture.’ Unfors 
tunately, however, even the furniture refuses to accommo- 
date itself to the naturalistic view of things. Once we 
begin to examine it attentively, we find that it abounds 
in hints of wonder and mystery: declares aloud that even 
chairs and tables are not what they seem. 

We have seen that the most elementary criticism, applied to 
any ordinary object of perception, tends to invalidate the simple 
and comfortable creed of “common sense”; that not merely 
faith, but gross credulity, is needed by the mind which would 
accept the apparent as the real. I say, for instance, that I 
“see” a house. I can only mean by this that the part of 
my receiving instrument which undertakes the duty called 
vision is affected in a certain way, and arouses in my mind 
the idea “house.” The idea “house” is now treated by me as 
a real house, and my further observations will be an unfolding 
enriching, and defining of this image. But what the external 
reality zs which evoked the image that I call “house,” I do 
not know and never can know. It is as mysterious, as far 
beyond my apprehension, as the constitution of the angelic 
choirs. Consciousness shrinks in terror from contact with the 
mighty verb “to be.” I may of course call in one sense to 
“corroborate,” as we trustfully say, the evidence of the other; 
may approach the house, and touch it. Then the nerves of 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 11 


my hand will be affected by a sensation which I translate 
as hardness and solidity; the eye by a peculiar and wholly 
incomprehensible sensation called redness; and from these 
purely personal changes my mind constructs and externalizes 
an idea which it calls red bricks. Science herself, however, 
if she be asked to verify the reality of these perceptions, 
at once declares that though the material world be real, 
the ideas of solidity and colour are but hallucination. They 
belong to the human animal, not to the physical universe : 
pertain to accident not substance, as scholastic philosophy 
would say. 

“The red brick,” says Science, “is a mere convention. In 
reality that bit, like all other bits of the universe, consists, so far 
as I know at present, of innumerable atoms whirling and dancing 
one about the other. It is no more solid than a snowstorm. 
Were you to eat of Alice-in-Wonderland’s mushroom and 
shrink to the dimensions of the infra-world, each atom might 
seem to you a planet and the red brick itself auniverse. More- 
over, these atoms themselves elude me as I try to grasp them. 
They are only manifestations of something else. Could I track 
matter to its lair, 1 might conceivably discover that it has no 
extension, and become an idealist in spite of myself. As for 
redness, as you call it, that is a question of the relation between 
your optic nerve and the light waves which it is unable to 
absorb. This evening, when the sun slopes, your brick will 
probably be purple; a very little deviation from normal vision 
on your part would make it green. Even the sense that the 
object of perception is outside yourself may be fancy ; since 
you as easily attribute this external quality to images seen in 
dreams, and to waking hallucinations, as you do to those objects 
which, as you absurdly say, are “ really there.” 

Further, there is no trustworthy standard by which we can 
separate the “real” from the “unreal” aspects of phenomena. 
Such standards as exist are conventional: and correspond to con- 
venience, not to truth. It is no argument to say that most men 
see the world in much the same way, and that this “way” is the 
true standard of reality: though for practical purposes we have 
agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our 
neighbours. Those who are honest with themselves know that 
this “sharing” is at best incomplete. By the voluntary adop- 


12 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


tion of a new conception of the universe, the fitting of a new 
alphabet to the old Morse code—a proceeding which we call the 
acquirement of knowledge—we can and do change to a marked 
extent our way of seeing things: building up new worlds from 
old sense impressions, and transmuting objects more easily and 
thoroughly than any magician. “ Eyes and ears,” said Hera- 
cleitus, “are bad witnesses to those who have barbarian souls” : 
and even those whose souls are civilized tend to see and hear all 
things through a temperament. In one and the same sky the 
poet may discover the veritable habitation of angels, whilst the 
sailor sees only a promise of dirty weather ahead. Hence, 
artist and surgeon, Christian and rationalist, pessimist and 
optimist, do actually and truly live in different and mutually 
exclusive worlds, not only of thought but also of perception. 
Each, in Professor James’s phrase, literally “dichotomizes the 
Kosmos in a different place.” Only the happy circumstance 
that our ordinary speech is conventional, not realistic, permits 
us to conceal from{one another the unique and lonely world in 
which each lives. \'Now and then an artist is .born, terribly 
articulate, foolishly truthful, who insists on “Speaking as he 
saw.” Then other men, lapped warmly in their artificial 
universe, agree that he is mad: or, at the very best, an “ extra- 
ordinarily imaginative fellow.” , 

Moreover, even this uniqué world of the individual is not 
permanent. Each of us, as we grow and change, works inces- 
santly and involuntarily at the re-making of our sensual 
universe. We behold at any specific moment not “that which 
is,’ but “that which we are”; and personality undergoes many 
readjustments in the course of its passage from birth through 
maturity to death. The mind which seeks the Real, then, in 
this shifting and subjective “natural” world is of necessity 
thrown back on itself: on images and concepts which owe more 
to the “seer” than to the “seen.” But Reality must be real for 
all, once they have found it: must exist “in itself” upon a plane 
of being unconditioned by the perceiving mind. Only thus can 
it satisfy that mind’s most vital instinct, most sacred passion— 
its “instinct for the Absolute,” its passion for truth. 

You are not asked, as a result of these antique and elemen- 
tary propositions, to wipe clean the slate of normal human 
experience, and cast in your lot with intellectual nihilism. You 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 13 


are only asked to acknowledge that it is but a slate, and that 
the white scratches upon it which the ordinary man calls facts, 
and the Scientific Realist calls knowledge, are at best relative 
and conventionalized symbols of that aspect of the unknowable 
reality at which they hint. This being so, whilst we must all 
draw a picture of some kind on our slate and act in relation 
therewith, we cannot deny the validity—though we may deny 
the usefulness—of the pictures which others produce, however 
abnormal and impossible they may seem; since these are 
sketching an aspect of reality which has not come within our 
sensual field, and so does not and cannot form part of our world. 
Yet, as the theologian claims that the doctrine of the Trinity 
veils and reveals not Three but One, so the varied aspects under 
which the universe appears to the perceiving consciousness hint 
at a final reality, or in Kantian language a Transcendental 
Object, which shall be, not any one, yet all of its manifestations ; 
transcending yet including the innumerable fragmentary worlds 
of individual conception. We begin, then, to ask what can be 
the nature of this One ; and whence comes the persistent instinct 
which—receiving no encouragement from sense experience— 
apprehends and desires this unknown unity, this all-inclusive 
Absolute, as the only possible satisfaction of its thirst for truth. 

2. The second great conception of Being—/dealtsm—has 
arrived by a process of elimination at a tentative answer to this 
question. It whisks us far from the material universe, with its 
interesting array of “things,” its machinery, its law, into the 
pure, if thin, air of a metaphysical world. Whilst the naturalist’s 


SAE 


world is constructed from _an observation of the. evidence offered 


by the < senses, the. Idealist’s. “world. is. constructed....from..an., 


observation of the | "processes _ of thought. There are but two 


ei 


things; he Says in effect, about which we are sure: the © 


existence of a thinking subject, a conscious Self, and of an 
object, an Idea, with which that subject deals. We know, that 
is to say, both Mind and Thought. What we call the universe 
is really a collection of such thoughts; and these, we agree, have 
been more or less distorted by the subject, the individual 
thinker, in the process of assimilation. Obviously, we do not 
think all that there is to be thought, conceive all that there is to 
be conceived: neither do we necessarily combine in right order 
and proportion those ideas which we are capable of grasping. 


14 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Reality, says Objective Idealism, is the complete, undistorted 
Object, the big thought, of which we pick up these fragmentary 
hints: the world of phenomena which we treat as real being 
merely its shadow show or “ manifestation in space and time.” 

According to the form of Objective Idealism here chosen 
from amongst many as typical—for almost every Idealist has 
his own scheme of metaphysical salvationt—we live in a 
universe which is, in popular language, the Idea, or Dream of its 
Creator. We, as Tweedledum explained to Alice in the most 
philosophic of all fairy tales, are “just part of the dream.” All 
life, all phenomena, are the endless modifications and expres- 
sions of the one transcendent Object, the mighty and dynamic 
Thought of one Absolute Thinker in which we are bathed. 
This Object, or certain aspects of it—and the place of each 
individual consciousness within the Cosmic Thought, or, as we 
say, our position in life, must largely determine which these 
aspects shall be—is interpreted by the senses and conceived by 
the mind, under limitations which we are accustomed to call © 
matter, space, and time. But we have no reason to suppose 
that matter, space, and time are necessarily parts of reality; of 
the ultimate Idea. Probability points rather to their being the 
pencil and paper with which we sketch it. As our vision, our 
idea of things, tends to approximate more and more to that of | 
the Eternal Idea, so we get nearer and nearer to reality: for the 
idealist’s reality is simply the Idea, or Thought of God. Tas, 
he says, is the supreme unity at which all the illusory appear- 
ances that make up the widely differing worlds of “common 
sense,” of science, of metaphysics, and of art dimly hint. This is 
the sense in which it can truly be said that only the supernatural 
' possesses reality; for that world of appearance which we call © 
- natural is certainly largely made up of preconception and 
illusion, of the hints offered by the eternal real world of 
Idea outside our gates, and the quaint concepts which we at our 
receiving instruments manufacture from them. 

There is this to be said for the argument of Idealism: that 
in the last resort, the destinies of mankind are invariably guided, 
not by the concrete “facts” of the sense world, but by concepts 


* There are four main groups of such schemes: (1) Subjective ; (2) Objective ; 
(3) Transcendental (Kantian) ; (4) Absolute (Hegelian). To these must perhaps be 
added the Immanental Idealism of Professor Eucken. 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 15 


which are acknowledged by every one to exist only on the 
mental plane. In the great moments of existence, when he 
rises to spiritual freedom, these are the things which every man 
feels to be real, It is by these and for these that he is found 
willing to live, work, suffer, and die. Love, empire, religion, 
altruism, fame, all belong to the transcendental world. Hence, 
they partake more of the nature of reality than any “ fact” 
could do; and man, dimly recognizing this, has ever bowed to 
them as to immortal centres of energy. Religions as a rule are 
steeped in idealism : Christianity in particular is a trumpet call 
to an idealistic conception of life, Buddhism is little less. Over 
and over again, their Scriptures tell us that only materialists 
will be damned. 

In Idealism we have perhaps the most sublime theory of 
Being which has ever been constructed by the human intellec; 
a theory so sublime, in fact, that it can hardly have been p 
duced by the exercise of “pure reason” alone, but must 
looked upon as a manifestation of that natural mysticism, t 
instinct for the Absolute, which is latent in man. But, whe 
ask the idealist how we are to attain communion with the re 
which he describes to us as “certainly there,” his system 
denly breaks down; and discloses itself as a diagram 
heavens, not a ladder to the stars. This failure of Idea 
find in practice the reality of which it thinks so much 
in the opinion of the mystics, to a cause which finds 
matic expression in the celebrated phrase by which St 
marked the distinction between religion and philosophy. 
located the soul of man in the head ; Christ located i 
heart.” That is to say, Idealism, though just in its p 
and often daring and honest in their application, is stulti 
the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its 
trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead o 
piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but 
not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to t 
new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing 
that mattered, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and 
its observations bear the same Relation to reality as the art of 
the anatomist does to the mystery of birth. ® 7, . aves: i 

3. But ‘there is yet another Theory of Bang ‘to be con- J erty 
sidered: that which may be loosely defined as Philosophi¢ lo 
























K 


16 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Scepticism. This is the attitude of those selves who refuse 
to accept either the realistic or the idealistic answer to the 
eternal question: and, confronted in their turn with the riddle 
of reality, reply that there is no riddle to solve. We of course 
assume for the ordinary purposes of life that for every sequence 
a:b: present in our consciousness there exists a mental or 
material A:B: in the external universe; and that the first 
is a strictly relevant, though probably wholly inadequate, ex- 
pression of the second. The bundle of visual and auditory 
sensations, for instance, whose sum total I am accustomed to 
call Mrs. Smith, corresponds with something that exists in the 
actual as well as in my phenomenal world. Behind my Mrs. 
Smith, behind the very different Mrs. Smith which the X rays 
would exhibit, there is, contends the Objective Idealist, a trans- 
ndental, or in the Platonic sense an ideal Mrs. Smith, at 
ose qualities I cannot even guess; but whose existence 
quite independent of my apprehension of it. But though 
do and must act on this hypothesis, it remains only a 
othesis; and it is one which philosophic scepticism will 
let pass, 
he external world, say the sceptical schools, is—so far as 
w it—a concept present in my mind. If my mind ceased 
st,so far as I know the concept which I call the world 
cease to exist too. The one thing which for me in-- 
ly zs, is the selfs experience, its whole consciousness. 
this circle of consciousness I have no authority to 
in guesses as to what may or may not Be. Hence, for 
Absolute is a meaningless diagram, a superfluous com- 
n of thought: since the mind, wholly cut off from 
t with external reality, has no reason to suppose that 
a reality exists except in its own ideas. Every effort 
e by philosophy to go forth in search of it is merely the 
Ftaphysical squirrel running round the conceptual cage. In 
e completion and perfect unfolding of the set of ideas with 
which our consciousness is furnished, lies the only reality which 
we can ever hope to know. Far better to stay here and make 
ourselves at home: only this, for us, truly is. 

This purely subjective conception of Being has found repre- 
sentatives in every school of thought: even including, by a 
curious paradox, that of mystical philosophy, its one effective 

























THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 17 


antagonist. Thus Delacroix, after an exhaustive and even 
sympathetic analysis of St. Teresa’s progress towards union 
with the Absolute, ends upon the assumption that the God 
with whom she was united was the content of her own sub- 
conscious mind.t_ Such a mysticism is that of a kitten running 
after its own tail: a different path indeed from that which the 
great seekers for reality have pursued. The reductio ad absurdum 
of this doctrine is found in the so-called “ philosophy” of New 
Thought, which begs its disciples to “try quietly to realize that 
ithe Infinite is really You.”? By its utter denial not merely of 
a knowable, but of a logically conceivable Transcendent, it 
drives us in the end to the conclusion of extreme pragmatism ; 

that Truth, for us, is not an immutable reality, but merely 
that id idea whi which “happens to work : Out _as true and. useful...in. any 


tnt ORGS A ene BIDEN 


given yen_eXperience. _ There is. ‘no-teality.. -behind..appearance, no 
Iss behind the veil ; therefore all faiths, all figments with which 
we people that nothingness are equally true, provided they be 
comfortable and good to live by. 

Logically carried out, this conception of Being would permit 
each _man.to regard other men as _non- -existent except within 
“his. own.consciousness : the ‘only. place where a strict scepticism 
“will allow that _anything | exists. Even the mind which con- 
céives consciousness exists for us only in our own conception 
of it; we no more know what we are than we know what we 
shall be. Man is left a conscious Something in the midst, so 
far as he knows, of Nothing: with no resources save the exploring 
of his own consciousness. 

Philosophic scepticism is particularly interesting to us in 
our present inquiry, because it shows us the position in which 
“pure reason,” if left to itself, is bound to end. It is utterly 
logical; and though we may feel it to be absurd, we can never 
prove it to be so. Those persons who are temperamentally 
inclined to credulity may become naturalists, and persuade 
themselves to believe in the reality of the sense world. Those 
with a certain instinct for the Absolute may adopt the more 
reasonable faith of idealism. But the true intellectualist, who 
concedes nothing to instinct or emotion, is obliged in the end 
to adopt some form of sceptical philosophy. The horrors of 


* Delacroix, ‘‘ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” Deeds 
2 E. Towne, “‘ Just how to Wake the Solar Plexus,” p. 25. 


ad 


» 
a 


é 
f 


F 
i 
f 


18 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


nihilism, in fact, can only be escaped by the exercise of faith: 
by a trust in man’s innate but strictly irrational instinct for that 
Real “above all reason, beyond all thought” towards which at 
its best moments his spirit tends. If the metaphysician be true 
to his own postulates, he is compelled at last to acknowledge 
that we are forced, every one of us, to live, to think, and at last 
to die, in an unknown and unknowable world: fed arbitrarily 
and diligently, yet how we know not, by ideas and suggestions 
whose truth we cannot test but whose pressure we cannot resist. 
It is not by sight but by faith—faith in a supposed external 
order which we can never prove to exist, and in the approxi- 
mate truthfulness and constancy of the vague messages which 
we receive from it—that ordinary men must live and move. 
We must put our trust in “laws of nature” which have been 
devised by the human mind as a convenient epitome of its own 
observations of phenomena, must, for the purposes of daily life, 
accept these phenomena at their face value: an act of faith 
beside which the grossest superstitions of the Neapolitan 
peasant are hardly noticeable. 

~ The intellectual quest of Reality, then, leads us down one 
of three blind alleys: (1) To an acceptance of the symbolic 
world of appearance as the real; (2) to the elaboration of a 
theory—also of necessity symbolic—which, beautiful in itself 
cannot help us to attain the Absolute which it describes ; (3) to 


a hopeless but strictly logical scepticism. 


In answer to the “Why? Why?” of the bewildered and 
eternal child in us, philosophy, though always ready to postulate 
the unknown if she can, is bound to reply only, “ WVesczo / 
Nescio!” In spite of all her busy map-making, she cannot 
reach the goal which she points out to us: cannot explain the 
curious conditions under which we imagine that we know; 
cannot even divide with a sure hand the subject and object of 
thought. Science, whose business is with phenomena and our 
knowledge of them, though she too is an idealist at heart, has 
been accustomed to explain that all our ideas and instincts, 
the pictured world that we take so seriously, the oddly limited 
and illusory nature of our experience, appear to minister to one 
great end: the preservation of life, and consequent fulfilment of 
that highly mystical hypothesis, the Cosmic Idea. Each per- 
ception, she assures us, serves a useful purpose in this evolu- 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 19 


tionary scheme: a scheme, by the way, which has been invented 
—we know not why—by the human mind, and imposed upon 
an obedient universe. 

By vision, hearing, smell, and touch, says Science, we and 
our way about, are warned of danger, obtain our food. The 

male perceives _beauty in the female in order that ‘the 
species may bef propagated. It is true that this primitive 

instinct has given birth to higher and purer emotions; but 
these too fulfil a social purpose and are not so useless as they 
seem. Man must eat to live, therefore many foods give us 
agreeable sensations. If he over eats, he dies ; therefore indi- 
gestion is an unpleasant pain. Certain facts of which too keen 
a perception would act detrimentally to the life-force are, for 
most men, impossible of realization: ze. the uncertainty of life, 
the decay of the body, the vanity of all things under the sun. 
When we are in good health, we all feel very real, solid, and 
permanent; and this is of all our illusions the most ridiculous, 
and also the most obviously useful from the point of view of the 
efficiency and preservation of the race. 

But when we look a little closer, we see that this brisk 
generalization does not cover all the ground—not even that 
little tract of ground of which our senses make us free; 
indeed, that it is more remarkable for its omissions than for 
its inclusions. Récéjac has well said that “from the- moment 
in which man is no longer content to devise things useful for 
his existence under the exclusive action of the will-to-live, the 
principle of (physical) evolution has been violated.”! Nothing 
can be more certain than that man is not so content. He has 
been called by utilitarian philosophers a tool-making animal— 
the highest praise they knew how to bestow. More surely he is 
a vision-making animal;? a creature of perverse and unpractical 

‘ideals, dominated by dreams no less than by appetites—dreams 
which can only be justified upon the theory that he moves 
‘towards some other goal than that of physical perfection or 
intellectual supremacy, is controlled by some higher and more 
vital reality than that of the determinists. One is driven to 


* * Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 15. 

? Or, as St. Thomas Aquinas suggests, a contemplative animal, since ‘‘ this act 
alone in man is proper to nim, and is in no way shared by any other being in this 
world” (** Summa Contra Gentiles,” 1. iii. cap. xxxvii., Rickaby’s translation). 


20 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


the conclusion that if the theory of evolution is to include 
or explain the facts of artistic and spiritual experience—and 
it cannot be accepted by any serious thinker if these great 
tracts of consciousness remain outside its range—it must be 
rebuilt on a mental rather than a physical basis. 

Even the most normal, most ordinary human life includes 
in its range fundamental experiences—violent and unforgettable 
_ sensations—forced on us as it were against our will, for which 
_ science finds it hard to account. These experiences and sensa- 
. tions, and the hours of exalted emotion which they bring with 
them—often recognized by us as the greatest, most significant 
hours of our lives—fulfil no office in relation to her pet “ func- 
tions of nutrition and reproduction.” It is true that they are 
far-reaching in their effects on character; but they do little or 
nothing to assist that character in its struggle for physical life. 
To the unprejudiced eye many of them seem hopelessly out 
of place in a universe constructed on strictly physico-chemical 
lines—look almost as though nature, left to herself, tended to 
contradict her own beautifully logical laws. Their presence, 
more, the large place which they fill in the human world of 
appearance, is a puzzling circumstance for deterministic philo- 
sophers ; who can only escape from the dilemma here presented 
to them by calling these things illusions, and dignifying their 
own more manageable illusions with the title of facts. 

Amongst the more intractable of these groups of perceptions 
and experiences are those which we connect with religion, with 
pain, and with beauty. All three, for those selves which are 
capable of receiving their messages, possess a mysterious 
authority far in excess of those feelings, arguments, or 
appearances which they may happen to contradict. All 
three, were the universe of the naturalists true, would be 
absurd; all three have ever been treated with the reverence 
due to vital matters by the best minds of the race. 

A. I need not point out the hopelessly irrational character of 
all great religions, which rest, one and all, on a primary assump- 
tion that can never be intellectually demonstrated, much less 
proved; the assumption that the supra-sensible is somehow 
important and real, and can be influenced by the activities 
of man. This fact has been incessantly dwelt upon by their 
critics, and has provoked many a misplaced exercise of 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 21 


ingenuity on the part of their intelligent friends. Yet religion 
—emphasizing and pushing to extremes that general depend-— 
ence on faith which we saw to be an inevitable condition of our 
lives—is one of the most universal and ineradicable functions 
_of man, and this although it constantly acts detrimentally to 
the interests of his merely physical existence, opposes “the 
exclusive action of the will-to-live,” except in so far as that will 
aspires to eternal life. Strictly utilitarian, almost logical in the 
savage, religion becomes more and more transcendental with 
the upward progress of the race. It begins as black magic; 
it ends as Pure Love. Why did the Cosmic Idea elaborate this 
religious instinct, if the construction put upon its intentions by 
the determinists be true? 

B. Consider again the whole group of phenomena which 
are known as “the problem of suffering”: the mental 
anguish and physical pain which appear to be the inevitable 
result of the steady operation of “natural law” and its 
voluntary assistants, the cruelty, greed, and injustice of man. 
Here, it is true, the naturalist seems at first sight to make a 
little more headway, and is able to point to some amongst the 
cruder forms of suffering which are clearly useful to the race: 
punishing us for past follies, spurring to new efforts, warning 
against future infringements of “law.” But he forgets the 
many others which refuse to be resumed under this simple 
formula: forgets to explain how it is that the Cosmic Idea 
involves the long torments of the incurable, the tortures of 
the innocent, the deep anguish of the bereaved, the existence 
of so many gratuitously agonizing forms of death. He forgets, 
too, the strange fact that man’s capacity for suffering tends to , 
increase in depth and subtlety with the increase of culture and 
civilization; ignores the still more mysterious, perhaps most 
significant circumstance that the highest types have accepted 
it eagerly and willingly, have found in Pain the grave but 
kindly teacher of immortal secrets, the conferrer of liberty 
even the initiator into amazing joys. 

Those who “explain” suffering as the result of nature’s 
immense fecundity—a by-product of that overcrowding and 
stress through which the fittest tend to survive—forget that 
even were this demonstration valid and complete it would leave 
the real problem untouched. The question is not, whence come 


22 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


those conditions which provoke in the self the experiences 
called sorrow, anxiety, pain: but, why do these conditions Zurt 
the self? The pain is mental; a little chloroform, and though 
the conditions continue unabated the suffering is gone. Why 
does full consciousness always include the mysterious capacity 
for misery as well as for happiness—a capacity which seems 
at first sight to invalidate any conception of the Absolute as 
Beautiful and Good? Why does evolution, as we ascend the . 
ladder of life, foster instead of diminishing the capacity for 
useless mental anguish, for long, dull torment, bitter grief? 
Why, when so much lies outside our limited powers of per- 
ception, when so many of our own most vital functions are 
unperceived by consciousness, does suffering of some sort form 
an integral part of the experience of man? For utilitarian pur- 
poses acute discomfort would be quite enough; the Cosmic 
Idea, as the determinists explain it, did not really need an 
apparatus which felt all the throes of cancer, the horrors of 
neurasthenia, the pangs of birth. Still less did it need the 
torments of impotent sympathy for other people’s irremediable 
pain, the dreadful power of feeling the world’s woe. We are 
hopelessly over-sensitized for the part science calls us to play. | 

Pain, however we may look at it, indicates a profound dis- 
harmony between the sense-world and the human self. If it is 
to be vanquished, either the disharmony must be resolved by 
a deliberate and careful adjustment of the self-to the world 
of sense, or, that self must turn from the sense-world to some 
other with which it is in tune.t Pessimist and optimist here 
join hands. But whilst the pessimist, resting in appearance, 
only sees “nature red in tooth and claw” offering him little 
hope of escape, the optimist thinks that pain and anguish— 
which may in their lower forms be life’s harsh guides on the 
path of physical evolution—in their higher and apparently 
“useless” developments are her leaders and teachers in the 
upper school of Supra-sensible Reality. He believes that they 
press the self towards another world, still “natural” for him, 
though “super-natural” for his antagonist, in which it will be 
more at home. Watching life, he sees in Pain the complement 
of Love: and is inclined to call these the wings on which man’s 


* All the healing arts, from Asculapius and Galen to Metchnikoff and Mrs. Eddy, 
have virtually accepted and worked upon these two principles. 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 23 


irit can best take flight towards the Absolute. Hence he 
an say with A Kempis, “Gloriari in tribulatione non est grave 
manti,” * and needs not to speak of morbid folly when he sees 
he Christian saints run eagerly and merrily to the Cross.? 

He calls suffering the “gymnastic of eternity,” the “terrible 
aitiative caress of God”; recognizing in it a quality for which 
he disagreeable rearrangement of nerve molecules cannot 
.ccount. Sometimes, in the excess of his optimism, he puts 
0 the test of practice this theory with all its implications. 
Refusing to be deluded by the pleasures of the sense world, 
ae accepts instead of avoiding pain, and becomes an ascetic ; 


\ puzzling type for the convinced naturalist,{who, falling back’ 


‘ pon contempt—that favourite resource of the frustrated reason 
—can only regard him as diseased, 

7 Pain, then, which plunges like a sword through creation, 
leaving on the one side cringing and degraded animals and 
on the other side heroes and saints, is one of those facts of 
universal experience which are peculiarly intractable from the 
point of view of a merely materialistic philosophy. _— 

C. From this same point of view the existence of music 
2and poetry, the qualities of beauty and of rhythm, the evoked 
sensations of awe, reverence, and rapture, are almost as 
ddfficult to account for. The question wy an apparent corru- 
Suation of the Earth’s surface, called for convenience’ sake an 
Alp, coated with congealed water, and perceived by us as a 
snowy peak, should produce in certain natures acute sensations 
of ecstasy and adoration, why the skylark’s song should catch 
us up to heaven, and wonder and mystery speak to us alike in 
“the little speedwell’s darling blue” and in the cadence of the 
wind, is a problem that seems.to be merely absurd, until it is 
seen to be insoluble. Here Madam How and Lady Why alike 
are silent. With all our busy seeking, we have not found the 
sorting house where loveliness is extracted from the flux of 
things. We know not why “great” poetry should move us to 
unspeakable emotion, or a stream of notes, arranged in a 

* ** De Imitatione Christi,” 1. ii. cap. vi. 

# ** Such as these, I say, as if enamoured of My honour and famished for the food 
of souls, run to the table of the Most holy Cross, willing to suffer pain. . . . To these, 
My most dear sons, trouble is a pleasure, and pleasure and every consolation that the 


world would offer them are a toil’’ (St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogo, cap. xxviii.) 
Here and throughout I have used Thorold’s translation. 


\ 
NV 


/ 


24 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


peculiar sequence, catch us up to heightened levels of vitality: 
nor can we guess how a passionate admiration of that which we 
call “best” in art or letters can possibly contribute to the 
physical evolution of the race. In spite of many lengthy dis- 
quisitions on esthetics, Beauty’s secret is still her own. A 
shadowy companion, half seen, half guessed at, she keeps step 
with the upward march of life: and we receive her message 
and respond to it, not because we understand it but because 
we must. 

Here it is that we approach that attitude of the self, that 
point of view, which is loosely and generally called mysttec . 
Here, instead of those broad blind alleys which philosope 
showed us, a certain type of mind has always discerned three 
strait and narrow ways going out towards the Absolute. In 
religion, in pain, in beauty, and the ecstasy of artistic satisfac- 
tion—and not only in these, but in many other apparently 
useless peculiarities of the empirical world and of the perceiving 
consciousness—these persons insist that they recognize at any 
rate the fringe of the real. Down these three paths, as well as 
by many another secret way, they claim that news comes to the 
self concerning levels of reality which in their wholeness ar 
inaccessible to the senses: worlds wondrous and immorta. 
whose existence is not conditioned by the “given” world whis® 
those senses report. “ Beauty,” said Hegel, who, though he wy ” 
no mystic, had a touch of that mystical intuition which no 
philosopher can afford to be without, “is merely the Spiritual 
making itself known sensuously.”! “In the good, the beautiful, 
the true,” says Rudolph Eucken, “we see Reality revealing its 
personal character. They are parts of a coherent and sub- 
stantial spiritual world.”2 Here, some of the veils of that 
substantial world are stripped off: Reality peeps through, and 
is recognized dimly, or acutely, by the imprisoned self. | 

Récéjac only develops this idea when he says,3 “ If the mind 


/ penetrates deeply into the facts of esthetics, it will find more 


/ 


and. more, that these facts are based upon an ideal identity 
between the mind itself and things. At a certain point the 
harmony becomes so complete, and the finality So close that it 


Lees 1 *€ Philosophy of Religion,’’ vol. ii. p. 8, 


v ‘AS 2 « Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 148. 
| 3 ‘* Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 74. 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 25 


gives us actual emotion. The Beautiful then becomes the | 
sublime; brief apparition, by which the soul is caught up into 
the true mystic state, and touches the Absolute. It is scarcely 
possible to persist in this esthetic perception without feeling 
lifted up by it above things and above ourselves, in an ontological 
vision which closely resembles the Absolute of the Mystics.” oe 

It was of this underlying reality—this truth of things—that 
St. Augustine cried in a moment of lucid vision, “Oh, Beauty so 
old and so new, too-late_have-—I-loved thee!”! It is in this 
sense also that «beauty i is truth, truth beauty” » and as regards 
the knowledge of ultimate things which is possible to ordinary 
men, it may well be that 


‘* That is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 


“Of Beauty,” says Plato in an immortal passage, “I repeat 
again that we saw her there shining in company with the 
celestial forms; ‘and coming to earth we find her here too 
shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. 
For sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses: though not 
by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been trans- 
porting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other 
ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. 
But this is the privilege of Beauty, that being the loveliest she is 
also the most palpable to sight. Now he who is not newly 
initiated, or who has been corrupted, does not easily rise out of 
this world to the sight of true beauty in the other. ... But he 
whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of 
many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any- 
one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of 
Divine Beauty ; and at first a shudder runs through him, and 
again the old awe steals over him. . . .”2 7 


v 

* Aug. Conf., bk. x. cap. xxvii. ik E 

2 Phaedrus, § 250 (Jowett’s translation). The reference in the phrase ‘‘ he whose 
initiation is recent”’ is to the rite of admission into the Greek Mysteries. It is believed 
by some authorities that the neophyte was then cast into an hypnotic sleep by his 
‘‘initiator,” and whilst in this condition a vision of the ‘‘ glories of the other world ”’ 
was suggested to him. The main phenomena of ‘‘ conversion” were thus artificially 
produced: but the point of attack being the mind rather than the heart, the results, 
as would appear from the context, were usually transient. See for matter bearing on 
this point, Rudolf Steiner, ‘‘ Das Christenthum als mystiche Thatsache.” 


26 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Most men in the course of their lives have known such 
Platonic hours of initiation, when the sense of beauty has risen 
from a pleasant feeling to a passion, and an element of strange- 
ness and terror has been mingled with their joy. In those 
hours the world has seemed charged with a new vitality ; with 
a splendour which does not belong to it but is poured through 
it, as light through a coloured window, grace through a sacra- 
ment, from that Perfect Beauty which “shines in company with 
the celestial forms” beyond the pale of appearance. In such 
moods of heightened consciousness each blade of grass seems 
fierce with meaning, and becomes a well of wondrous light: 
a “little emerald set in the City of God.” The seeing self is 
indeed an initiate thrust suddenly into the sanctuary of the 
mysteries: and feels the “old awe and amazement” with which 
man encounters the Real. In such experiences as these, a new 
factor of the eternal calculus appears to be thrust in on us, a 
factor which no honest seeker for truth can afford to neglect ; 
since, if it be dangerous to say that any two systems of know- 
ledge are mutually exclusive, it is still more dangerous to give 
uncritical priority to any one system. We are bound, then, to 
examine this path to reality as closely and seriously as we 
should investigate the most neatly finished safety-ladder of 
solid ash which offered a salzta alle stelle. 

Why, after all, take as our standard a material world whose 
existence is affirmed by nothing more trustworthy than the 
sense-impressions of “normal men”; those imperfect and 
easily cheated channels of communication? The mystics, those 
adventurers of whom we spoke upon the first page of this 
book, have always declared, implicitly or explicitly, their 
‘ distrust in these channels of communication. They have 
never for an instant been deceived by phenomena, nor by the 
careful logic of the industrious intellect. One after another, 
with extraordinary unanimity, they have rejected that appeal 
to the unreal world of appearance which is the standard of all 
sensible men: affirming that there is another way, another 
secret, by which the conscious self may reach the actuality 
which it seeks. More complete in their grasp of experience 
than the votaries of intellect or of sense, they accept as central 
for life those spiritual messages which are mediated to the self 
by religion, by beauty, and by pain. More reasonable than the 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 27 


rationalists, they find in that very hunger for reality which is ! 
the mother of all metaphysics, an implicit proof that such reality 
exists; that there is something else, some final satisfaction, 
beyond the ceaseless stream of sensation which besieges con- 
sciousness. “In that thou hast sought me, thou hast already 
found me,”y says the voice of Absolute Truth in their ears. 
This is the first doctrine of mysticism. Its next is that only 
in so far as the self is real can it hope to know Reality: like 
to like: Cor ad cor loquitur. Upon the propositions implicit in 
these two laws the whole claim and practice of the mystic life 
depends. 

“Finite as we are,” they say—and here they speak not 
for themselves, but for the race—“lost though we seem to be 
in the woods or in the wide air’s wilderness, in this world of 
time and of chance, we have still, like the strayed animals or 
like the migrating birds, our homing instinct. ... We seek. 
That is a fact. We seek a city still out of sight. In the con- 
trast with this goal, we live. But if this be so, then already we 
possess something of Being even in our finite seeking. For 
the readiness to seek is already something of an attainment, 
even if a poor one.”? 

Further, in this our finite seeking we are not wholly de- 
pendent on that homing instinct. For some, who have climbed 
to the hill-tops, that city is not really out of sight The mystics 
see it clearly. They report to us concerning it. Science and 
metaphysics may do their best and their worst: but these path- 
finders of the spirit never falter in their statements concerning 
that independent spiritual world which is the only goal of 

“pilgrim man.” They say that messages come to him from 
that spiritual world, that complete reality which we call 
Absolute: that we are not, after all, hermetically sealed from 
it. To all selves who will receive it, news comes every hour 
of the day of a world of Absolute Life, Absolute Beauty, 
Absolute Truth, beyond the bourne of time and place: news 
that most of us translate—and inevitably distort in the process 
—into the language of religion, of beauty, of love, or of pain. 

- Ofall those forms of life and thought with which humanity 
has fed its craving for truth, mysticism alone postulates, and in 
the persons of its great initiates proves, not only the existence 


* Royce, “ The World and the Individual,” vol. i. p. 181. 


28 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of the Absolute, but also this link: this possibility first of 
knowing, finally of attaining it. It denies that possible. know-_ 
.ledge.is..to. be limited (a) to sense impressions, (0) to any __ 
process of intellectation, (c) to the unfolding of. the content of - 
normal consciousness. Such” diagrams of experience, it says, 
ave hopelessly” ‘incomplete. The mystics find the basis of their 
method not in logic but in life: in the existence of a discover- 
able “real,” a Ost of true being, within the seeking subject 
which can, in that ineffable experience which they call the 
“act of union,” fuse itself with and thus apprehend the reality 
of the sought Object. In theological language, their theory of 
_knowledge is that the spirit of man, itself essentially divine, is- 
capable of immediate communion onl God, the One Reality. 
~"Tn mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the 
beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual 
sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. 
Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and 
looks ; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of 
first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. 
Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a 
diagram—impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the 
mystics is lovable, attainable, alive. 

“Oh, taste and see!” they cry, in accents of astounding 
certainty and joy. “ Ours is an experimental science. We can — 
but communicate our system, never its result. We come to 
you not as thinkers, but as doers. Leave your deep and absurd 
trust in the senses, with their language of dot and dash, which 
may possibly report fact but can never communicate per- 
sonality. If philosophy has taught you anything, she has 
surely taught you the length of her tether, and the impossibility 
of attaining to the doubtless admirable grazing land which lies 
beyond it. One after another, idealists have arisen who, straining 
frantically at the rope, have announced to the world their ap- 
proaching liberty ; only to be flung back at last into the little 


t The idea of Divine Union as man’s true end is of course of immeasurable 
antiquity. Its first definite appearance in the religious consciousness of Europe 
seems to coincide with the establishment of the Orphic Mysteries in Greece and 
Southern Italy in the sixth century B.c, See Adam, ‘‘The Religious Teachers of 
Greece,” p. 92. Itis also found in the Hermetic writings, which vary between the 
fifth and second century B.c. Compare Petrie, ‘‘ Personal Religion in Egypt before 
Christianity,” p. 102, and Khode, ‘‘ Psyche”’ (1898). 


THE POINT OF DEPARTURE 29 


circle of sensation. But here we are, a small family, it is true, 
yet one that refuses to die out, assuring you that we have 
slipped the knot and are free of those grazing grounds. This is 
evidence which you are bound to bring into account before you 
can add up the sum total of possible knowledge; for you will 
find it impossible to prove that the world as seen by the 
mystics, ‘unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright,’ 
is less real than that which is expounded by the youngest and 
most promising demonstrator of a physico-chemical universe. 
We will be quite candid with you. Examine us as much as 
you like: our machinery, our veracity, our results. We cannot 
promise that you shall see what we have seen, for here each 
man must adventure for himself; but we defy you to stigmatize 
our experiences as impossible or invalid. Is your world of ex- 
perience so well and logically founded that you dare make of it 
a standard? Philosophy tells you that it is founded on nothing 
better than the reports of your sensory apparatus and the tradi- 
tional concepts of the race. Certainly it is imperfect, probably 
it is illusion ; in any event, it never touches the foundation of 
things. Whereas “what the world, which truly knows nothing, 
calls ‘ “Mysticism, is the science | ‘of. ultimates kas the_science..of 
self-évident Reality, which cannot be ‘ reasoned _about, because 
it is the object « of pure reason or Perception.” a 


ALLIED A TE DNA EO ” 





me 


; Coventry Patmore, ‘‘ The Rod, the ‘Root, and the F ee: ** Aurea Dicta,” 
CXXxVili. 


CHAPTER II 
MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 


Another philosophic scheme— Vitalism, the ‘‘new philosophy ’? — Driesch, 
Bergson, Eucken—The vital principle as the essence of reality—Freedom—Spon- 
taneity — Nietzsche — The inclusive character of vitalistic philosophy: physical, 
psychological, spiritual—Vitalism and the mystics—Heracleitus, the father of the 
new philosophy—its other connections—its central idea—The World of Becoming 
—Reality as dynamic—Life as incessant change—Bergson’s theory of the intellect 
—of perception—TIts relation to mysticism— Reality known by communion— 
Intuition—its partial nature— Rudolph Eucken’s teaching—a spiritual vitalisih— 
Reality as an ‘‘independent spiritual world ””—Man’s possible attainment of it—he 
is ‘‘the meeting-point of various stages of reality ”—Rebirth—Denial of the sense 
world—Eucken’s teaching and mysticism—Mystics the heroic examples of ‘* indepen- 
dent spiritual life ’’—Vitalism. criticized—its central idea only half a truth—The 
mystic consciousness of reality two-fold—Being and Becoming—Transcendence and 
Immanence—both true—St. Augustine on the Nature of God—Man’s instinct for 
the Absolute—Mysticism justifies it—reconciles it with a dynamic universe— 
Boehme—Revelation by strife—Mystic union—its two forms—its agent, the absolute 
element in man—Total mystic experience only expressible in terms of personality— 
How is this experience attained ? 


E glanced, at the beginning of this inquiry, at the 

\ V) universes which result from the various forms of 

credulity practised by the materialist, the idealist, 

and the sceptic. We saw the mystic denying by word and 

act the validity of the foundations on which those universes 

are built: substituting his living experience for their conceptual 
schemes. 

But there is another and wholly distinct way of seeing 
reality—or, more correctly, one aspect of reality—old as to 
its central idea, new as to its applications of that idea. This 
scheme of things—this new system, method or attitude— 
possesses the merit of accepting and harmonizing many 
different forms of experience ; even those supreme experiences 
and intuitions peculiar to the mystics. It is the first great 

30 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 31 


contribution of the twentieth century to the history of man’s 
quest of reality. A true “child of its time,” it is everywhere 
in the air. Many who hardly know its name have been 
affected by its spirit, and by the vague luminous shadow which 
is always cast before a coming system of thought. Almost 
insensibly, it has already penetrated and modified our attitude, 
not only to philosophy, but to religion, science, art, and 
practical life. Like the breath of spring, impossible to grasp 
and difficult to define, it is instinct with fresh life and 
fertilizes where it goes. It has come upon us from different 
directions: already possesses representatives on each of the 
three great planes of thought. Driesch*! and other biologists 
have applied it in the sphere of organic life. Bergson,? starting 
from psychology, has taken its intellectual and metaphysical 
aspects in hand. Rudolph Eucken3 has developed from, or 
beside it, a living Philosophy of the Spirit, of man’s relations 
to the Real: the nearest approach, perhaps, which any modern 
thinker has made to a constructive mysticism. 

At the bottom of these three very different philosophies 
the same principle may be discerned; the principle, that is to 
say, of Vitalism, of a free spontaneous and creative life as the 
very essence of the Real. Not law but aliveness, incalculable 
and indomitable, is their motto: not human logic, but actual 
living experience, is their text. The Vitalists, whether the 
sphere of their explorations be biology, psychology or ethics, 
see the whole Cosmos, the physical and spiritual worlds, as 
instinct with initiative and spontaneity: as above all things free. 
_For them, nature is “on the dance”: one cannot calculate her 
acts by the nice processes of dialectic. Though she be con- 
ditioned by the matter with which she works, her freedom is 
stronger than her chains. Pushing out from within, seeking 
expression, she buds and breaks forth into original creation.4 

t ** The Science and Philosophy of Organism,” Gifford Lectures, 1907-8. 

2 “Les Données Immédiates de la Conscience ” (1889), ‘‘ Matiere et Mémoire”’ 
(1896), ‘* L’Evolution Créatrice ’’ (1907). 

3 **Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt” (1896), ‘* Der Sinn und Wert 
des Lebens” (1908), &c. See Bibliography. 

4 The researches of Driesch (of. cz#.) and of de Vries (*‘ The Mutation Theory,” 1910) 
have done much to establish the truth of this contention upon the scientific plane. Note 
particularly Driesch’s account of the spontaneous responsive changes in the embryo 


sea-urchin, and de Vries’ extraordinary description of the escaped stock of Evening 
Primrose, varying now this way, now that, ‘‘ as if swayed by a restless internal tide.” 


32 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


The iron laws of the determinists are merely her habits, not 
her fetters: and man, in seeing nature in the terms of “cause and 
effect,” has been the dupe of his own limitations and prejudices. 

Bergson, Nietzsche, Eucken, though they differ in their 
opinion as to life’s meaning, are alike in this vision: in the 
stress which they lay on the supreme importance and value of 
life—a great Cosmic life transcending and including our own. 
This is materialism inside out: for here what we call the 
universe is presented to us as an expression of life, not life as 
an expression or by-product of the universe. The strange 
passionate philosophy of Nietzsche, that unbalanced John the 
Baptist of the modern world, is really built upon an intense 
belief in this supernal nature and value of Life, Action and 
Strength: and spoilt by the one-sided individualism which pre- 
vented him from holding a just balance between the great and 
significant life of the Ego and the greater and more significant 
life of the All. 

Obviously, the peculiar merit of the vitalistic philosophy 
lies in its ability to satisfy so many different thinkers, starting 
from such diverse points in our common experience. On the 
phenomenal side it seems able to accept and transfigure the 
statements of physical science. In its metaphysical aspect it 
leaves place for those ontological speculations which take their 
rise in psychology. It is friendly to those who demand an 
important place for moral and spiritual activity in the universe. 
Finally—though here we must be content with deduction rather 
than declaration—it leaves in the hands of the mystics that 
unique power of attaining to Absolute Reality which they have 
always claimed: shows them as the true possessors of freedom, 
the torch-bearers of the race. 

Did it acknowledge its ancestors with that reverence which 
is their due, Vitalism would identify itself with the great name 
of Heracleitus; the mystic philosopher, who, in the fifth cen- 
tury B.C., introduced its central idea to the European world. 
It is—though this statement might annoy some of its inter- 
preters—both a Hellenic anda Christian system of thought : and 
represents the reappearance of intuitions which have too long 
been kept in the hiddenness by the leaders of the race. A living 


* The debt to Heracleitus is acknowledged by Professor Schiller. See ‘* Studies 
in Humanism,” pp. 39, 40. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 33 


theologian has said, that as in hats so in heresies, the very 
latest creation is generally a revival of forgotten fashions of the 
past. This law applies with peculiar force to systems of 
philosophy, which generally owe more to the judicious resuscita- 
tion of that which sleeps, than to the birth of that which 
has been newly conceived. 

I have said that, so far as its ontology is concerned, this 
“new ” way of seeing the Real goes back to Heracleitus, whose 
“Logos” or Energizing Fire is but another symbol for that free 
and living Spirit of Becoming, that indwelling creative power, 
which Vitalism acknowledges as the very soul or immanent 
reality of things. This eternal and substantial truth the 
Vitalists have picked up, retranslated into modern terms and 
made available for modern men, In its view of the proper 
function of the intellect it has some unexpected affinities with 
Aristotle, and after him with St. Thomas Aquinas ; regarding 
it as a departmental affair, not—with the Platonists—as the 
organ of ultimate knowledge. Its theory of knowledge is close 
to that of the mystics: or would be, if those wide-eyed gazers 
on reality had interested themselves in any psychological theory 
of their own experiences. 

A philosophy which can harmonize such diverse elements as 
these, is likely to be useful in our present attempt towards 
an understanding of mysticism: for it clearly illustrates certain 
aspects of perceived reality which other systems ignore. It has - 
the further recommendation of involving not a mere diagram of 
metaphysical possibilities, but a genuine theory of knowledge. 
That is to say, its scope includes psychology as well as 
philosophy : the consideration, not only of the nature of Reality 
but also of the self’s power of knowing it; the machinery of 
contact between the mind and the flux of things. Hence there is 
about it a wholeness, an inclusive quality very different from the 
tidy ring-fenced systems of other schools of thought. It has no 
edges, and if it be true to itself should have no negations, It is 
a vision, not a map. 

Now the primary difference between Vitalism and the 
philosophies which we have already considered is this. Its 
Word of Power, its central idea, is not Being but Becoming.! 


* See, for the substance of this and the following pages, the works of Henri 
Bergson already mentioned. I am here also enormously indebted to the personal 


Db 


34 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Translated into the language of Platonic theology, not the 
changeless One, the Absolute, but His energizing Thought—the 
Son, the Creative Logos—is at once the touchstone of truth, the 
end of knowledge, the supreme reality which it proposes as 
accessible to human consciousness. 
“ All things,” said Heracleitus, “are in a state of flux.” 
Everything happens through strife.” “Reality is a condition 
of unrest.” Such is also the opinion of Bergson and his 
disciples ; who, agreeing in this with the champions of physical 
science, look upon the Real as dynamic rather than static, as 
becoming rather than dezng perfect, and invite us to see in Time 
—the precession or flux of things—the very stuff of reality— 


‘*From the fixed lull of Heaven she saw 
Time like a pulse shake fierce 
Through all the worlds ’’—* 


said Rossetti of the Blessed Damozel. Bergson, seeing from 
another standpoint, ignores, if he does not deny, the existence 
of the “ fixed lull,” the still Eternity, the point of rest ; and finds 
everywhere the pulse of Time, the vast unending storm of life and 
love. Reality, says Bergson, is pure creative Life; a definition 
which excludes those ideas of perfection and finality involved in 
the idealist’s concept of Pure Being as the Absolute and Un- 
changing One. This life, as he sees it, is fed from within rather 
than upheld from without. Its evolves by means of its own 
inherent and spontaneous creative power. The biologist’s 
Nature “so careful of the type”; the theologian’s Creator 
external to His universe, and “holding all things in the hollow 
of His hand”: these are gone, and in their place we have a 
universe teeming with free individuals, each self-creative, each 
evolving eternally, yet towards no term. 

The first feeling of the philosopher initiated into this setter 
is that of the bewildered traveller who “could not see the wood 
for trees.” The deep instinct of the human mind that there 


help of my friend Mr. William Scott Palmer, whose lucid interpretations have done 
so much towards familiarizing English readers with Bergson’s philosophy ; and to 
Mr. Willdon Carr’s paper on ‘‘ Bergson’s Theory of Knowledge,” read before the 
Aristotelian Society, December, 1908. 

* Heracleitus, Fragments, 46, 84. * First edition, canto x. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 35 


must be a unity, an orderly plan in the universe, that the strung- 
along beads of experience do really form a rosary, though it 
be one which we cannot repeat, is here deliberately thwarted. 
Creation, Activity, Movement; this, says Vitalism, rather than 
any merely apparent law and order, any wholeness, is the 
essential quality of the Real—zs the Real: and life is an eternal 
Becoming, a ceaseless changefulness. Boldly adopting that 
Hermetic principle of analogy “Quod inferius sicut quod 
superius,’* which occult and mystical thinkers have always 
loved, it invites us to see in that uninterrupted change which is 
the condition of our normal consciousness, a true image, a 
microcosm of the living universe as a part of which that con- 
sciousness has been evolved. 

If we accept this theory, we must then impute to life in its 
fullness—the huge, many levelled, many coloured life, the 
innumerable worlds which escape the rhythm of our senses; 
not merely that patch of physical life which those senses 
perceive—a divinity, a greatness and splendour of destiny far 
beyond that with which it is credited by those who hold to a 
physico-chemical theory of the universe. We must perceive in 
it, as the mystics have done, “the beating of the Heart of God”; 
and agree with Heracleitus that “there is but one wisdom, to 
understand the knowledge by which all things are steered 
through the All.” 2 

Union with reality—apprehension of it—will then upon this 
hypothesis be union with life at its most intense point: in its 
most dynamic aspect. It will be a deliberate harmony set up 
with the Logos which that same far-seeing philosopher described 
as “man’s most constant companion.” Ergo, says the mystic, 
union with a Personal and Conscious spiritual existence, 
immanent in the world—one form, one half of the union which 
I have always sought: since this is clearly life in its highest 
manifestation. Beauty, Goodness, Splendour, Love, all those 
words of glamour which exhilarate the soul, are but the man- 
made names of aspects or qualities picked out by human 
intuition as characteristic of this intense and eternal Life in 
which is the life of men. 

How, then, may we know this Life, this creative and 
Original soul of things, in which we are bathed ; in which, asin a 


* See below, Pt. I. Cap, VII. 2 Heracleitus, of. ct. 


56 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


river, swept along? Not, says Bergson bluntly, by any intel- 
lectual means. The mind which thinks it knows Reality 
because it has made a diagram of Reality, is merely the dupe of 
its own categories. The intellect is a specialized aspect of the 
self, a form of consciousness: but specialized for very different 


purposes than those of metaphysical speculation. Life has — 
evolved it in the interests of life ; has made it capable of dealing ~ 


with “ solids,” with concrete things. With these it is at home. 
Outside of them it becomes dazed, uncertain of itself; for it is 


~~ 


no longer doing its natural work, which is to ef life, not to 
know it. Inthe interests of experience, and in order to grasp | 
perceptions, the intellect breaks up experience, which is in | 


reality a continuous stream, an incessant process of change and 


response with no separate parts, into purely conventional | 


“moments,” “periods,’ or psychic “states.” It picks out 


from the flow of reality those bits which are significant for © 
human life; which “interest” it, catch its attention. From © 


these it makes up a mechanical world in which it dwells, and 
which seems quite real until it is subjected to criticism. It does, 
says Bergson, in an apt and already celebrated simile, the work 
of a cinematograph: takes snapshots of something which is 
always moving, and by means of these successive static repre- 


¥, 
& 
* 
ie 


t 
, 
+ 
i 


i, 


on 


sentations—none of which are real, because Life, the object 


photographed, never was at rest—it recreates a picture of life, of © 
motion. This picture, this rather jerky representation of divine — 
harmony, from which innumerable moments are left out, is very — 


useful for practical purposes: but it is not reality, because it is 

not alive. 
This “real world,” then, is the result of your selective activity, 

and the nature of your selection is largely outside your control. 


Your cinematograph machine goes at a certain pace, takes its — 


snapshots at certain intervals. Anything which goes too quickly 
for these intervals, it either fails to catch, or merges with pre- 
ceding and succeeding movements to form a picture with which 


it can deal. Thus we treat, for instance, the storm of vibra-_ 


tions which we convert into “sound” and “light.” Slacken or 


* On the complete and undivided nature of our experience in its ‘‘ Wholeness,” 
and the sad work our analytic brains make of it when they come to pull it to pieces, 
Bradley has some valuable contributory remarks in his ‘‘ Oxford Lectures on 
Poetry,’’ p. 15¢ } 


ees fe ——— . _— 
ee Se oe SE oe ee ie ae ts Oe 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 87 


accelerate its clock-time, change its rhythmic activity, and at 
once you take a different series of snapshots, and have as a 
result a different picture of the world. Thanks to the time at 
which the normal human machine is set, it registers for us what 
we call, in our simple way, “the natural world.” A slight 
accession of humility or common sense might teach us that 
a better title would be “ ow natural world.” 

Now let human consciousness change or transcend its 
rhythm, and any other aspect of any other world may be ours 
as a result. Hence the mystics’ claim that in their ecstasies 
they change the conditions of consciousness, and apprehend a 
deeper reality which is unrelated to human speech, cannot be 
dismissed as unreasonable. Do not then confuse that intellect, 
that surface-consciousness which man has trained to be an organ 
of utility and nothing more, and which therefore can only 
deal adequately with the “given” world of sense, with that 
mysterious something in you—inarticulate but inextinguishable 
—by which you are aware that a greater truth exists. This 
truth, whose neighbourhood you feel, and for which you long, is 
Life. You are in it all the while, “like a fish in the sea, like a 
bird in the air,’ as St. Mechthild of Hackborn said many 
centuries ago,? 

Give yourself, then, to this divine and infinite life, this 
mysterious Cosmic activity in which you are immersed, of 
which you are born. Trust it. Let it surge in on you. Cast 
off, as the mystics are always begging you to do, the fetters of 
the senses, the “remora of desire”; and making your interests 
identical with those of the All, rise to freedom, to that spon- 
taneous, creative, artistic life which, inherent in every individual 
self, is our share of the life of the Universe. You are yourself 
vital—a free centre of energy—did you but know it. You can 
move to higher levels, to greater reality, truer self-fulfilment, if 
you will. Though you be, as Plato said, like an oyster in your 
shell, you can open that shell to the living waters without, draw 
from the “ Immortal Vitality.” Thus only—by contact with the 
real—shall you know reality. Cor ad cor loquitur. 

The Indian mystics declare substantially the same truth 
when they say that the illusion of finitude is only to be escaped 
by relapsing into the substantial and universal life, abolishing 


* “Liber Specialis Gratiae,” 1. ii. cap. xxvi. 


* 


38 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


individuality. So too, by a deliberate self-abandonment to that 
which Plato calls the “saving madness” of ecstasy, did the 
initiates of Dionysus “draw near to God.” So their Christian 
cousins assert that “ self-surrender” is the only way: that they 
must die to live, must lose to find: that knowing implies being: 
that the method and secret which they have always practised 
consists merely in a meek and loving union—the synthesis 
of passion and self-sacrifice—with that divine and unseparated 
life, that larger consciousness in which the soul is grounded, 
and which they hold to be conterminous with God. In their 
hours of contemplation, they deliberately empty themselves 
of the false images of the intellect, neglect the cinematograph of 
sense. Then only are they capable of transcending the merely 
intellectual levels of consciousness and perceiving that Reality 
which “hath no image.” | 

“ Pilgrimage to the place of the wise,” said Jalalu ’d Din, “is 
to find escape from the flame of separation.” It is the mystics’ 
secret in a nutshell. “When I stand empty zz God’s will 
and empty of God’s will and of all His works and of God 
Himself,’ cries Eckhart with his usual violence of language, 
“then am I above all creatures and am neither God nor 
creature, but I am what I was and evermore shall be.” He 
attains, that is to say, by this escape from a narrow selfhood, 
not to identity with God—that were only conceivable upon 
a basis of pantheism—but to an identity with his own sub- 
stantial life, and through it with the life of a real and living 
universe; in symbolic language, with “the thought of the Divine 
Mind” whereby union with that Mind in the essence or ground 
of the soul becomes possible. 

The first great message of this Vitalistic philosophy, this 
majestic dream of Time and Motion, is then seen to be—Cease 
to identify your intellect and your self: a primary lesson which 
none who purpose the study of mysticism may neglect. 
Become at least aware of, if you cannot “know,” the larger, 
truer self: that free creative self which constitutes your life, 
as distinguished from the scrap of consciousness which is its 
servant. 

How then, asks the small consciously-seeking personality 
of the normal man, am I to become aware of this, my 


* Meister Eckhart, Pred. Ixxxvii. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 39 


larger self, and of the free, eternal, spiritual life which it 
lives ? 

Here philosophy, emerging from the water-tight compart- 
ment in which metaphysics have lived too long retired, calls 
in psychology ; and tells us that in intuition, in a bold reliance 
on contact between the totality of the self and the external ' 
world—perhaps too in those strange states of lucidity which 
accompany great emotion and defy analysis—lies the normal 
man’s best chance of attaining, as it were, a swift and sidelong 
knowledge of this real. Smothered in daily life by the fretful 
activities of our surface-mind, reality emerges in our great 
moments ; and, seeing ourselves in its radiance, we know, for 
good or evil, what we are. “We are not pure intellects... 
around our conceptional and logical thought there remains 
a vague, nebulous Somewhat, the substance at whose expense 
the luminous nucleus we call the intellect is formed.”? 
In this aura, this diffused sensitiveness, we are asked to 
find man’s medium of communication with the Universal 
Life. 

Such partial, dim and fragmentary perceptions of the Real, 
however, such “excursions into the Absolute,” cannot be looked 
upon as a Satisfaction of man’s hunger for Truth. He does 
not want to peep, but to live. Hence he cannot be satisfied 
with anything less than a total and permanent adjustment 
of his being to the greater life of reality. This alone, as 
Rudolph Eucken has well pointed out, can resolve the dishar- 
monies between the self and the world, and give meaning 
and value to human life.2 

The possibility of this adjustment—of union between man’s 
life and that “independent spiritual life” which is the stuff 
of reality—is the theme alike of mysticism and of Eucken’s 
spiritual vitalism ; or, as he prefers to call it, his Activistic 


* Willdon Carr, of. ctt. 

2 “Tt seems as if man could never escape from himself, and yet, when shut in to 
the monotony of his own sphere, he is overwhelmed with a sense of emptiness. The 
only remedy here is radically to alter the conception of man himself, to distinguish 
within him the narrower and the larger life, the life that is straitened and finite 
and can never transcend itself, and an infinite life through which he enjoys com- 
munion with the immensity and the truth of the universe. Can man rise to this 
spiritual level? On the possibility of his doing so rests all our hope of supplying any 
meaning or value to life” (‘‘ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,”’ p. 81). 


*» 


40 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Philosophy. Reality, says Eucken, is an independent spiritual 
world, unconditioned by the apparent world of sense. To know 
it and to live in it is man’s true destiny. His point of contact 
with it is personality: the inward fount of his being: his heart, 
not his head. Man is real, and in the deepest sense alive, in 
virtue of this free personal life-principle within him: but he is 
bound and blinded by the ties set up between his surface- 
intelligence and the sense-world. The struggle for reality must 
be a struggle on man’s part to transcend the sense-world, escape 
its bondage. He must renounce it, and be “re-born” to a 
higher level of consciousness; shifting his centre of interest 
from the natural to the spiritual plane. According to the 
thoroughness with which he does this, will be the amount 
of real life he enjoys. The initial break with the “world,” the 
refusal to spend one’s life communing with one’s own cinemato- 
graph picture, is essential if the freedom of the infinite is to 
be attained. Our life, says Eucken, does not move upon a 
single level, but upon two levels at once—the natural and 
the spiritual. The key to the puzzle of man lies in the fact 
that he is “the meeting point of various stages of Reality.” 2 
All his difficulties and triumphs are grounded in this. The 
whole question for him is, which world shall be central for 
him—the real, vital, all-embracing life we call Spirit, or 
the lower life of sense? Shall “Existence,” the superficial 
obvious thing, or “ Substance,” the underlying verity, be his 
home? Shall he remain the slave of the senses with: their 
habits and customs, or rise to a plane of consciousness, of 
heroic endeavour, in which—participating in the life of spirit— 
he knows reality because he is real? 

The mystics, one and all, have answered this question in 
the same sense: and, centuries before the birth of activistic 
philosophy, they have proved in their own experience that 
its premises are true. This philosophic diagram, this appli-. 
cation of the vitalistic idea to the transcendental world, does 
in fact fit the observed facts of mysticism far more closely 


_ * The essentials of Professor Eucken’s teaching are present in all his chief works : 
but will be found conveniently summarized in ‘‘ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens.” I 
am also greatly indebted to Mr. Boyce Gibson’s brilliant exposition ‘ Rudolph 
Eucken’s Philosophy.” 

2 ‘¢Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,”’ p. 121. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 41 


even than it fits the observed facts of man’s ordinary mental 
life. 

(1) The primary break with the sense-world. (2) The 
“new” birth and development of the spiritual consciousness 
on high levels—in Eucken’s eyes an essential factor in the 
attainment of reality. (3) That ever closer and deeper depend- 
ence on and appropriation of the fullness of the Divine Life; 
the conscious participation in, and active union with the 
infinite and eternal. These three imperatives of Eucken’s 
system, as we shall see later, form an exact description of the 
psychological process through which the mystics pass. If then 
Eucken be right in pointing to this transcendence as the 
highest destiny of the race, mysticism becomes the crown of 
man’s ascent towards Reality; the orderly completion of the 
universal plan. 

The mystics show us this independent spiritual life, this 
fruition of the Absolute, enjoyed with a fullness to which others 
cannot attain. They are the heroic examples of the life of spirit; 
just as the great artists, the great discoverers, are the heroic 
examples of the life of beauty and the life of truth. Directly 
participating, like all artists, in the Divine Life, they are always 
persons of exuberant vitality : but this vitality expresses itself in 
unusual forms, hard of understanding for ordinary men. When 
we see a picture or a poem, hear a musical composition, we 
accept it as an expression of life, an earnest of the power which 
brought it forth. But the deep contemplations of the great 
mystic, his visionary reconstructions of reality, and the frag- 
ments of them which he is able to report, do not seem to 
us—as they are—the equivalents, or more often the superiors 
of the artistic and scientific achievements of other great 
men. | 

Mysticism, then, offers us the history, as old as civilization, 
of a race of adventurers who have carried to its term the process 
of a deliberate and active return to the divine fount of 
things, have surrendered themselves indeed to the life-movement 
of the universe: hence have lived with an intenser life than other 
men can ever know. They have transcended the “sense-world ” 
and lived on high levels the spiritual life. Therefore they are 
types of all that our latent spiritual consciousness, which shows 
itself in the “hunger for the Absolute,” can be made to mean to 


42 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 
| 
us if we develop it ; and have in this respect a unique import- | 
ance for the race. | 

It is the mystics, too, who have perfected that method of 
intuition, that knowledge by union, the existence of which 
philosophy has been driven to acknowledge. But where the 
metaphysician obtains at best a sidelong glance at that Being 
“unchanging yet elusive,” whom he has so often defined but 
never discovered, the artist a brief and dazzling vision of the 
Beauty which is Truth, they gaze with confidence into the very 
eyes of the Beloved. 

The mystics, again, declare themselves to know the divinely 
real, free, and active “ World of Becoming” which Vitalistic 
philosophy expounds to us. They are, by their very constitu- 
tion, acutely conscious of the Divine Immanence and its unrest- 
ing travail: it is in them and they are in it: or, as they put it 
in their blunt theological way, “the spirit of God is within you.” 
But they are not satisfied with this statement and this know- 
ledge ; and here it is that they part company with the Vitalists. 
It is, they think, but half a truth. To know Reality in this 
way, to know it in its dynamic aspect, enter into “the great 
life of the All”: this is indeed, in the last resort, to know it 
supremely from the point of view of man—to liberate from 
selfhood the human consciousness—but it is not to know it 
from the point of view of God. There are planes of being 
beyond this ; countries dark to the intellect, deeps in which 
only the very greatest contemplatives have looked. These, 
coming forth, have declared with Ruysbroeck that “God accord- 
ing to the Persons is Eternal Work, but according to the 
Essence and Its perpetual stillness He is Eternal Rest.”? 

The full spiritual consciousness of the true mystic is 
developed not in one, but in two apparently opposite but 
really complementary directions :— 


AS ion 80 oils 
Ambo le corte del ciel manifeste.’’ 2 


On the one hand he is intensely aware of, and knows 
himself to be at one with that active World of Becoming, 
that deep and primal life of the All, from which his own 


* De Septem Gradibus Amoris,”’ cap. xiv. * Par. xxx. 95. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 43 


life takes its rise. Hence, though he has broken for ever 
with the bondage of the senses, he perceives in every mani- 
festation of life a sacramental meaning; a loveliness, a 
wonder, a heightened significance, which is hidden from other 
men. He may, with St. Francis, call the Sun and the Moon, 
Water and Fire, his brothers and his sisters : or receive, with 
Blake, the message of the trees, Because of his cultivation 
of disinterested love, because his outlook is not conditioned by 
“the exclusive action of the will-to-live,” he has attained the 
power of communion with the living reality of the universe ; 
and in this respect can truly say that he finds “God in all and 


_allin God.” Thus, the skilled spiritual vision of Lady Julian, 


transcending the limitations of human perception, entering into 
harmony with a larger world whose rhythms cannot be received 
by common men, saw the all-enfolding Divine Life, the mesh of 
reality. “For as the body is clad in the cloth,” she said, “ and 
the flesh in the skin and the bones in the flesh and the heart in 
the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of 
God and enclosed. Yea, and more homely : for all these may 
waste and wear away, but the Goodness of God is ever whole.” ! 
Many mystical poets and pantheistic mystics never pass beyond 
this degree of lucidity. 

On the other hand, the full mystic consciousness also attains 
to what is, I think, its really characteristic quality. It develops 
the power of apprehending the Absolute, Pure Being, the 
utterly Transcendent : or, as its possessor would say, can rise 
to “passive union with God.” This all-round expansion of 
consciousness, with its dual power of knowing by communion 
the temporal and eternal, immanent and transcendent aspects 
of reality—the life of the All, vivid, flowing and changing, and 
the changeless, conditionless life of the One—is the peculiar 
mark, the u/timo sigillo of the great mystic, and must never be 
forgotten in studying his life and work. 

As the ordinary man is the meeting-place between two 
stages of reality—the sense-world and the world of spiritual life 
—so the mystic, standing head and shoulders above ordinary 
men, is again the meeting-place between two orders. Or, if you 
like it better, he is able to perceive and react to reality under 
two modes, On the one hand he knows, and rests in, the 


* §* Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. vi. 


44 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


eternal world of Pure Being, the “ Sea Pacific” of the Godhead, 
indubitably present to him in his ecstasies, attained by him 
in the union of love. On the other, he knows—and works in— 
that “stormy sea,” the vital World of Becoming which is the 
expression of Its will. “Illuminated men,” says Ruysbroeck, 
‘are caught up, above the reason, into naked vision. There 
the Divine Unity dwells and calls them. Hence their bare 
vision, cleansed and free, penetrates the activity of all created 
things, and pursues it to search it out even to its height.” * 
Though philosophy has striven since thought began—and 
striven in vain—to resolve the paradox of Being and Becoming, 
of Eternity and Time, she has failed strangely enough to 
perceive that a certain type of personality has substituted 
experience for her guesses at truth, and achieved its solution, 
not by the dubious processes of thought, but by direct percep- 
tion. To the great mystic the “problem of the Absolute” 
presents itself in terms of life, not in terms of dialectic. He 
solves it in terms of life: by a change or growth of conscious- 
ness which—thanks to his peculiar genius—enables him to 
apprehend that two-fold Vision of Reality which eludes the 
perceptive powers of other men. It is extraordinary that this 
fact of experience—a central fact for the understanding of the 
contemplative type—has hitherto received no attention from 
writers upon mysticism. As we proceed with our inquiry, its 
importance, its far-reaching applications in the domains of 
psychology, of theology, of action, will become more and more 
evident. It provides the reason why the mystics could never 
accept the diagram of the Vitalists as a complete statement of 
the nature of Reality. “Whatever be the limits of your know- 
ledge, we know”—they would say—“that the world has another 
aspect than this: the aspect which is present to the Mind of 
God.” “Tranquillity according to His essence, activity accord- 
ing to His nature: perfect stillness, perfect fecundity,” 2 says 
Ruysbroeck again, this is the two-fold character of the Absolute. 
That which to us is action, to Him, they declare, is rest, “ His 
very peace and stillness coming from the brimming fullness of 
His infinite life.’”3 That which to us is Many, to that Transcen- 


* Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ Samuel” (Hello, p. 201). 
2 Ibid., ‘* De Vera Contemplatione”’ (Hello, p. 175). 
3 Von Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. ii. p. 132. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM © | 45 


dent Knower is One. Our World of Becoming rests on the 
bosom of that Pure Being which has ever been the final Object 
of man’s quest : the “river in which we cannot bathe twice” is 
the stormy flood of life flowing toward that divine sea. “How 
glorious,” says the Voice of the Eternal to St. Catherine of 
Siena, “is that soul which has indeed been able to pass from the 
stormy ocean to Me, the Sea Pacific, and in that Sea, which . 
is Myself, to fill the pitcher of her heart.” ? 

The evolution of the mystic consciousness, then, brings its 
possessors to this transcendent point of view: their secret is 
this unity in diversity, this stillness in strife. Here they are in 
harmony with Heracleitus rather than with his new interpreters. 
That most mystical of philosophers discerned a hidden unity 
beneath the battle, transcending all created opposites ; and, 
in the true mystical spirit, taught his disciples that “ Having 
hearkened not unto me but unto the Logos, it is wise to confess 
that all things are ome.”’2 This is the secret at which, the 
idealists’ arid concept of Pure Being has tried, so timidly, to 
hint: and which the Vitalists’ more intimate, more actual 
concept of Becoming has tried, so unnecessarily, to destroy. 
We shall see the glorious raiment in which the Christian 
mystics deck it when we come to consider their theological map 
of the quest. 

If it be objected—and this objection has been made by 
advocates of each school of thought—that the existence of the 
idealists’ and mystics’ “ Absolute” is utterly inconsistent with 
the deeply alive, striving spiritual life which the Vitalists 
identify with reality, I reply that both these concepts at bottom 
are but symbols of realities which the human mind can never 
reach ; and that the idea of stillness, unity and peace is and - 
has ever been humanity’s best translation of its final intuitive : 
perception of God. “‘ In the midst of silence a hidden. word was 
spoken to me.’ Where is this Silence, and where is the place 
in which this word is spoken? It isin the purest that the soul 
can produce, in her noblest part, in the Ground, even the Being 
of the Soul.”3 So Eckhart: and here he does but subscribe toa 
universal tradition. The mystics have always insisted that “ Be 


t St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogo, cap. Ixxxix, 
2 Heracleitus, of. czz. 
3 Meister Eckhart, Pred. i. 


at 


46 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


still, be still, and Axow” is the condition of man’s purest and 
most direct apprehensions of reality : that somehow quiet is the 
truest and deepest activity : and Christianity when she formu- 
lated her philosophy made haste to adopt and express this 
paradox. 

“Quid es ergo, Deus meus?” said St. Augustine, and gave 
an answer in which the vision of the mystic, the genius of the 
philosopher combined to hint something at least of the flaming 
heart of reality, the paradox of the intimacy and majesty of that 
all-embracing, all-transcending One. ‘“Summe, optime, poten- 
tissime, omnipotentissime, misericordissime, et justissime, secre- 
tissime et presentissime, pulcherrime et fortissime; stabilis et 
incomprehensibilis; immutabilis, mutans omnia: Numquam 
novus, nunquam vetus.... Semper agens, semper quietus: 
colligens et non egens: portans et implens et protegens; creans 
et nutriens et perficiens: quaerens cum nihil desit tibi.... 
Quid dicimus, Deus meus, vita mea, dulcedo mea sancta? Aut 
quid dicit aliquis, cum de te dicit?”? | 

It has been said that “Whatever we may do, our hunger 
for the Absolute will never cease.” The hunger—that innate 
craving for, and intuition of, a final Unity, a changeless good— 
will go on, however heartily we may feed on those fashionable 
systems which offer us a pluralistic or empirical universe. If, 
now, we admit in all living creatures—as Vitalists must do—an 
instinct of self-preservation, a free directive force which may be 
trusted and which makes for life; is it just to deny such an 
instinct to the human soul? The “entelechy” of the Vitalists, 
the “hidden steersman,” drives the phenomenal world on and 
up. What about that other sure instinct embedded in the race, 
breaking out again and again, which drives the spirit on and up; 
spurs it eternally towards an end which it feels to be definite 


* Aug. Conf., bk. i. cap. iv. ‘*What art Thou, then, my God? ... Highest, 
best, most potent [z.¢e., dynamic], most omnipotent [7.¢., transcendent], most merciful 
and most just, most deeply hid and yet most near. Fairest, yet strongest : steadfast, 
yet unseizable ; unchangeable yet changing all things; never new, yet never old. . . 
Ever busy, yet ever at rest; gathering yet needing not: bearing, filling, guarding ; 
creating, nourishing and perfecting; seeking though Thou hast no wants. . . 
What can I say, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what can any say who speaks ar 
Thee?’ Compare the strikingly similar Sifi definition of the Nature of God, as 
given in Palmer’s ‘‘ Oriental Mysticism,” pp. 22, 23. ‘* First and last, End and 
Limit of all things, incomparable and unchangeable, always near yet always far,” &c. 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 47 


yet cannot define? Shall we distrust this instinct for the 
Absolute, as living and ineradicable as any other of our powers, 
merely because the new philosophy finds it difficult to accom- 
modate and to describe? 

“We must,” says Plato in the “ Timzus,” “ make a distinction 

Jof the two great forms of being, and ask, ‘What is that which 
Is and has no Becoming, and what is that which is always 
becoming and never Is?’”* Without necessarily subscribing 
to the Platonic answer to this question, I think we may at any 
rate acknowledge that the question itself is sound and worth 
asking ; that it expresses a perennial demand of human nature: 
and that the analogy of man’s other instincts and cravings assures 
us that these his fundamental demands always indicate the 
existence of asupply.2. The great defect of Vitalism, considered 
as a system, is that it only professes to answer half of it; the 
half which Absolute Idealism disdained to answer at all. 

We have seen that the mystical experience, the fullest all- 
round experience in regard to the transcendental world which 
is attainable by humanity, declares to us that there are two 
aspects, two planes of discoverable Reality. We have seen also 
that hints of these two planes—often clear statements concern- 
ing them—abound in mystical literature of the personal first- 
hand type.3 Pure Being, says Boutroux in the course of his 
exposition of Boehme,4 has two characteristic manifestations, 
It shows itself to us as Power, by means of strife, of the 
struggle and opposition of its own qualities. But it shows 
itself to us as Reality, in harmonizing and reconciling within 
itself these discordant opposites. 

Its manifestation as Power, then, is for us in the dynamic 
World of Becoming, amidst the thud and surge of that life which 
is compounded of paradox, of good and evil, joy and sorrow, 
life and death. Here, Boehme declares that the Absolute God 
is voluntarily self-revealing. But each revelation has as its 


* Timaeus, § 27. 

2 ‘A natural craving,” said Aquinas, ‘‘cannot be in vain”; and the newest 
philosophy is creeping back to this ‘‘ mediaeval” point of view. Compare ‘‘Summa 
Contra Gentiles,” 1. ii. cap. Ixxix. 

3 Compare Dante’s vision in Par. xxx., where he sees Reality first as the 
streaming River of Light, the flux of things; and then, when his sight has been 
purged, as achieved Perfection, the Sempiternal Rose. 

4 E. Boutroux, ‘‘ Le Philosophe Allemand, Jacob Boehme,” p. 18, 


48 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


condition the appearance of its opposite: light can only be 
recognized at the price of knowing darkness, life needs death: 
love needs wrath. Hence if Pure Being—the Good, Beautiful 
and True—is to reveal itself, it must do so by evoking and 
opposing its contrary: as in the Hegelian dialectic no idea is ) 
complete without its negative. Such a revelation by strife, — 
however, is rightly felt by man to be incomplete. Absolute 
Reality, the Player whose sublime music is expressed at the 
cost of this everlasting friction between bow and lyre, is present, 
it is true, in His music. But He is best known in that “light, 
behind,” that unity where all these opposites are lifted up into’ 
harmony, into a higher synthesis: amd the melody is perceived, 
not as a difficult progress of sound, but as a whole. 

We have, then, (2) The Absolute Reality which the Greeks, 
and every one after them, meant by that seemingly chill 
abstraction which they called Pure Being: that Absolute One, 
unconditioned and undiscoverable, in Whom all is resumed. 
Changeless, yet changer of all, this One is the undifferentiated 
Godhead of Eckhart, the Transcendent Father of ordinary 
Christian theology. It is the great contribution of the mystics 
to humanity’s knowledge of the real that they find in this 
Absolute, in defiance of the metaphysicians, a personal object 
of love, the goal of their quest, the “Country of the Soul.” 

(6) But, contradicting the nihilism of Eastern contempla- 
tives, they see also a reality in the dynamic side of things: in | 
the seething pot of appearance. They are aware of an eternal © 
Becoming, a striving, free, evolving life, not merely as a _ 
shadow-show, but as an implicit of their Cosmos: God’s mani- — 
_ festation or showing, in which He is immanent, in which His 
Spirit truly works and strives. It is in ¢hzs plane of reality 
~ that all individual life is immersed: this is the stream which set 
out from the Heart of God and “turns again home.” 

The mystic knows his task to be the attainment of Being, 
union with the One, the “return to the Father’s heart”: for the 
parable of the Prodigal Son is to him the history of the 
universe. This union is to be attained, first by co-operation in 
that Life which bears him up, in which he is immersed. He 
must become conscious of this “great life of the All,” merge 
himself in it, if he would find his way back whence he came. 
Vae sol, ence there are really two separate acts of “divine 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 49 


union,” two separate kinds of illumination involved in the 
Mystic Way: the dual character of the spiritual consciousness 
‘brings a dual responsibility in its train. First, there is the 
vnion with Life, with the World of Becoming: and parallel with 
the illumination by which the mystic “gazes upon a more 
veritable world.” Secondly, there is the union with Being, with 
e One: and that final, ineffable illumination of pure love 
‘vhich is called the “knowledge of God.” It is by means of the 
‘¢bnormal development of the third factor, the free, creative 
‘{Spirit,” the scrap of Absolute Life which is the ground of his 
‘oul, that the mystic can (@) conceive and (4) accomplish these 
lranscendent acts. Only Being can know Being: we “ behold 
‘that which we are, and are that which we behold.” But there 
‘saspark in man’s soul, say the mystics, which is real—which 
‘In fact zs—and by its cultivation we may know reality. 
‘| Over and over again—as Being and Becoming, as Eternity 
nd Time, as Transcendence and Immanence, Reality and 
Appearance, the One and the Many—these two dominant 
\deas, demands, imperious instincts of man’s self will reappear ; 
he warp and woof of his completed universe. On the one 
and is his ineradicable intuition of a remote, unchanging 
Somewhat calling him: on the other there is his longing for and 
as clear intuition of an intimate, adorable Somewhat, companion- 
ing him. Man’s true Real, his only adequate God, must be 
great enough to embrace this sublime paradox, to take up these 
apparent negations into a higher synthesis. Neither the utter 
transcendence of extreme Absolutism, nor the utter immanence 
of the Vitalists will do. Both these, taken alone, are declared 
by the mystics to be incomplete. They conceive that Absolute 
Being who is the goal of their quest as manifesting Himself in 
a World of Becoming: agonizing in it, at one with it, yet though 
semper agens, also semper quietus. The Divine spirit which they 
know to be immanent in the heart and in the universe comes 
forth from and returns to the Transcendent One; and this 
division of persons in unity of substance completes the “Eternal 
Circle, from Goodness, through Goodness, to Goodness.” 
Absolute Being and Becoming, the All and the One, are 
found to be alike inadequate to their definition of this discovered 
Real; the “triple star of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.” Speak- 


ing always from experience—the most complete experience 
E 








b 
) 


50 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


that is possible to man—they describe to us an Absolute whiclh 
overpasses and includes the Absolute of philosophy, far 
transcends that Cosmic life which it fills and sustains, and 
is best defined in terms of Transcendent Personality ; which 
because of its richness and of the poverty of human speech 
they have sometimes been driven to define only by negations 
- At once static and dynamic, above life and in it, “all love ye’ 
‘all law,” eternal in essence though working in time, this vision 
resolves the contraries which tease those who study it fron! 
: without, and swallows up whilst it kindles to life all the partia 
interpretations of metaphysics and of science. 

Here then stands the mystic. By the help of two philo- 
sophies, eked out by the resources of symbolic expression, he 
has contrived to tell us something of his vision and his claim, 
Confronted by that vision—that sublime reconstruction of 
eternity—we may surely ask, indeed, are bound to ask, Wha 
is the machinery by which this self, akin to the aes 
and sense-fed self of our daily experience, has contrived to slif 
its fetters and rise to those levels of spiritual perception on 
which alone such vision can be possible to man? How has i!) 
brought within the field of consciousness those deep intuitions 
which fringe upon Absolute Life; how developed powers by 
which it is enabled to arrive at this amazing, this superhuman 
concept of the nature of Reality? Psychology will do some- 
thing, perhaps, to help us to an answer to this question ; and it is 
her evidence which we must examine next. But its final 
solution is the secret of the mystics; and they reply to our 
questioning, when we ask them, in the direct and uncom- 
promising terms of action, not in the refined and elusive periods 
of speculative thought. | 

“Come with us,” they say to the bewildered and entangled 
self, craving for finality and peace, “and we will show you a way 
out that shall not only be an issue from your prison but also a 

pathway to your Home. True, you are immersed, fold upon 
- fold, in the World of Becoming ; worse, you are besieged on all 
sides by the persistent illusions of sense. But you too are a 
child of the Absolute. You bear within you the earnest of your 
inheritance. At the apex of your spirit there is a little door, so 
high up that only by hard climbing can you reach it. There 
the Object of your craving stands and knocks; thence came 


MYSTICISM AND VITALISM 51 
those persistent messages—faint echoes from the Truth eternally 
hammering at your gates—which disturbed the comfortable life 
of sense. Come up then by this pathway, to those higher levels 
of reality to which, in virtue of the eternal spark in you, you 
Hielong. Leave your ignoble ease: your clever prattle: your 
bsurd attempts to solve the apparent contradictions of a Whole 
oo great for your useful little mind to grasp. Trust your deep 
nstincts: use your latent powers. Appropriate that divine, 
treative life which is the very substance of your being. Remake 
ourself in its interest, if you would know its beauty and its 
ruth. You can only behold that which you ave. Only the Real 
an know Reality.” 


_ 


sexs a i om — 


a 


CHAPTER III | 
MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 


Man’s craving to know more and love more—His mental machinery—Emotion 


Intellect, Will—Their demand of absolute objects—Conation and Cognition—Actioi, 


and Thought—Importance of emotion—Love and Will—Concentration—Contemple 
tion—The mystic sense—its liberation—Passivity—The Mystic State—Supralimina+ 


and subliminal personality—The ‘‘ ground of the soul ’—The ‘‘ subconscious mind ”’ | 


—extravagances of this doctrine—The subconscious not the equivalent of the 


transcendental self—Mystical theory of man’s spiritual sense—The New Birth—The 


Spiritual Self—Synteresis—The Spark of the Soul—the organ of transcendental 


consciousness—Transcendental Feeling—its expression—The Spark of the Soul sleeps _ 
in normal men—The mystic’s business is to wake it—Function of contemplation—it | 
alters the field of consciousness—Dual personality—The hidden self of the Mystic— 
its emergence—Entrancement—Mystical ill-health—Psycho-physical phenomena—-_ 
Mysticism and hysteria— Mysticism and longevity—The mystics’ psychic peculiarities” 
—their wholeness of life—Genius and mysticism compared—Philo on inspiration— — 


The function of passivity—Automatic states—Summary and conclusion 


E come now to consider the mental apparatus which — 
is at the disposal of the self: to ask what it can tell 


us of the method by which she can escape from the 


prison of the sense-world, transcend its rhythm, and attain know- — 


ledge of—or conscious contact with—Reality. We have seen 
the normal self close shut within the prison of the senses, and 
making, by the help of science and of philosophy, a survey of the 
premises and furniture: testing the thickness of the walls and 
speculating on the possibility of trustworthy news from without 


a geen cee 


os 


i 


penetrating to her cell. Shut with her in that cell, two forces, — 


the desire to know more and the desire to love more, are cease- — 


é 


lessly at work. Where the first of these cravings predominates, ~ 


we call the result a philosophical or a scientific temperament; 


where it is overpowered by the ardour of unsatisfied love, the — 


selfs reaction upon things becomes poetic, artistic, and charac- 


teristically—though not always explicitly—religious. 


ih 


— — 


We have seen further that a certain number of persons 


52 


ea ae, 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 53 


declare that they have escaped from this prison. Have they 
done so, it can only be in order to satisfy these two hungry 
desires, for these, and these only, make that a prison which 
might otherwise be a comfortable hotel ; and since these desires 


' are in all of us, active or latent in varying degrees, it is clearly 


worth while to discover, if we can, the weak point in the walls, 


and that method of attack which is calculated to take advantage 


_of this one possible way of escape. 


Before we attempt to define in psychological language the 
way in which the mystic slips the fetters of sense, sets out upon 
his journey towards home, it seems desirable to examine the 
machinery which is at the disposal of the normal, conscious 
self: the creature, or part of a creature, which we recognize 
as “ourselves,” Psychologists are accustomed to tell us that 
the messages from without awaken in that self three main 
forms of activity. (1) They arouse in her movements of attrac- 
tion or repulsion, of desire or distaste, which vary in intensity 
from the semi-conscious cravings of the hungry infant to the 
passions of the lover, artist, or fanatic. (2) They stimulate in 
her a sort of digestive process in which she combines and 
cogitates upon the material presented to her ; finally absorbing 
a certain number of the resulting concepts and making them 
part of herself or of her world. (3) The movements of desire, 
or the action of reason, or both in varying combinations, awaken 
in her a determination by which percept and concept issue in 
action ; bodily, mental, or spiritual. 

Hence we say that the main aspects of the self are Emotion, 
Intellect, and Will: and that the nature of the individual is 
emotional, intellectual, or volitional, according to whether feel- 
ing, thought, or will assumes the reins. | 

Thanks to the watertight-compartment system of popular 
psychology, we are apt to personify these qualities ; thinking of 
them as sitting, like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, within the 
mind, and spinning the flax of experience into the thread of life. 
But these three words do not define three separate and mutually . 
exclusive things; rather a Trinity in Unity, three aspects, 
methods, or moments of the same thing—the conscious self’s 
reaction on her universe.? 


* There is a tendency on the part of the younger psychologists to rebel against 
this traditional diagram. Thus Godfernaux says (Revue Philosophique, September, 


54 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Now the unsatisfied self in her emotional aspect wants, as 
we have said, to love more; her curious intellect wants to know 
more. Both appetites are aware that they are being kept on a 
low diet ; that there really is more to love, and more to know, 
somewhere in the mysterious world without. They know, too, 
that their own powers of affection and understanding are worthy - 
of some greater and more durable objective than that provided 
by the illusions of sense. Urged therefore by the cravings of 
feeling or of thought, consciousness is always trying to run out 
to the encounter of the Absolute, and always being forced to 
return. The neat philosophical system, the diagrams of science, 
the “ sunset-touch,” are tried in turn. Art and life, the accidents 
of our humanity, all foster an emotional outlook; till the 
moment in which the neglected intellect arises and pronounces 
such an outlook to have no validity. Metaphysics and science 
seem to offer to the intellect an open window towards truth; 
till the heart looks out and declares this landscape to be a chill 
desert in which she can find no nourishment. These diverse 
aspects of things must be either fused or transcended if the 
whole self is to be satisfied ; for the reality which she seeks has 
got to meet both claims and pay in full. 

When Dionysius the Areopagite divided those angels who 
stand nearest God into the Seraphs who are aflame with perfect 
love, and the Cherubs who are filled with perfect knowledge, he 
only gave expression to the two most intense aspirations of the 
human soul, and described under an image the unattainable 
conditions of her bliss.t 

Now, there is a sense in which it may be said, that the 
desire of knowledge is a department of the desire of perfeet 
love : since one aspect of that primal, all inclusive passion is 


1902), ‘‘ Feeling, intelligence, will! When shall we be delivered from this tedious 
trinity? When shall we give up, once for all, this classification which corresponds 
to nothing?”” The classification, however, is retained here as a matter of general 
convenience. So long as its symbolic character is kept in mind, its advantages prob- 
ably outweigh its defects. . 

* The wise Cherubs, according to the beautiful imagery of Dionysius, are “all 
eyes,” but the loving Seraphs are ‘‘all wings.’”” Whilst the Seraphs, the figure of 
intensest Love, ‘‘ move perpetually towards things divine,” ardour and energy being 
their characteristics, the characteristic of the Cherubs is receptiveness, their power 
of absorbing the rays of the Supernal Light. (Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘* De Caelesti 
Ierarchia,” vi. 2, and vii. I.) 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 55 


clearly a longing to know, in the deepest, fullest, closest sense, 
the thing adored. Love’s characteristic activity—for Love, all 
wings, is inherently active, and “cannot be lazy,” as the mystics 
say—is a quest, an outgoing towards an object desired, which 
only when possessed will be fully known, and only when fully 
known can be perfectly adored.t Intimate communion, no less 
than worship, is of its essence. Joyous fruition is its proper 
end. This is true of all Love’s quests, whether the Beloved be 
human or divine—the bride, the Grail, the Mystic Rose, the 
plenitude of God. But there is no sense in which it can be 
said that the desire of love is merely a department of the desire 
of perfect knowledge: for that strictly intellectual ambition 
includes no adoration, no self-spending, no reciprocity of feeling 
between Knower and Known. Mere knowledge, taken alone, is 
a matter of receiving, not of acting: of eyes, not wings: a dead 
alive business at the best. 

There is thus a sharp distinction to be drawn between these 
two great expressions of life: the energetic love, the passive 
knowledge. One is related to the eager, outgoing activity, the 
dynamic impulse to do somewhat, physical, mental, or spiritual, 
which is inherent in all living things and which psychologists 
call conation; the other to the indwelling consciousness, the 
passive knowing somewhat, which they call cognztion. 

To go back to our original diagram, “conation” is almost 
wholly the business of will, but of will stimulated by emotion : 
for wilful action of every kind, however intellectual it may seem, 
is always the result of feeling. We act because we want to; 
our impulse to “do” is a synthesis of determination and desire. 
All man’s achievements are the result of conation, never of mere 
thought. “The intellect by itself moves nothing,” said Aristotle, 
and modern psychology has but affirmed this law. Hence his 
quest of Reality is never undertaken, though it may be greatly 
assisted, by the intellectual aspect of his consciousness; for the 
reasoning powers as such have little initiative. Their province is 
analytic, not exploratory. They stay at home, dissecting and 
-arranging matter that comes to hand; and do not adventure 


* So Récéjac says of the mystics, ‘‘ They desire to know, only that they may love ; 
and their desire for union with the principles of things in God, Who is the sum of 
them all, is founded on a feeling which is neither curiosity nor self-interest ” (‘* Fonde- 
ments de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 50). 


56 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM ; 


beyond their own region in search of food. Thought does not 
penetrate far into an object in which the self feels no interest— 
z.¢., towards which she does not experience a “ conative” move- 
ment of attraction, of desire—for interest is the only method 
known to us of arousing the will, and securing the fixity of 
attention necessary to any intellectual process. None think for 
long about anything for which they do not care; that is to 
say, which does not touch some aspect of their emotional life. 
They may hate it, love it, fear it, want it; but they must have 
some feeling about it. Feeling is the tentacle we stretch out to 
the world of things. 

Here the lesson of psychology is the same as that which 
Dante brought back from his pilgrimage; the supreme import- 
ance and harmonious movement of z/ destvo and 7 velle. Sz 
come rota ch egualmente e mossa,! these move together to fulfil the 
Cosmic Plan. In all human life, in so far as it is not merely a 
condition of passive “ awareness,’ the law which he found 
implicit in the universe is the law of the individual mind. 
Not logic, not “common sense,” but /’amor che move i sole 
e le altre stelle is the motive force of the spirit of man: in the 
inventors, the philosophers, and the artists, no less than in the 
heroes and in the saints. 

The vindication of the importance of feeling in our life, and 
in particular its primacy over reason in all that has to do with 
man’s contact with the transcendental world, has been one of 
the chief works of recent psychology. Especially in the sphere 
of religion it has come to be acknowledged that “ God known of 
the heart” is a better and more valid statement of ultimate 
experience than “God guessed at by the brain” ; that the active 
adventure of the spirit is more fruitful and more trustworthy 
than the dialectic proof. One by one the commonplaces of 
mysticism are being thus rediscovered by official science, and 
given their proper place in the psychology of the spiritual life. 
The steady growth of vitalistic theories of existence, with their 
tendency to emphasize the purely departmental and utilitarian 
nature of the intellect, and interpret everything in terms of 
vitality, assists this process. Thus Leuba has not hesitated to 
say that “ Life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is 
in the last analysis the end of religion,” 2 and we have seen that 


* Par. xxxiii. 143. ? The Monist, July, 1901, p. 572. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY «BT 


life, as we know it, appears to be far more tightly bound up with 
will and feeling than with thought. 

That which our religious and ethical teachers were wont to 
call “ mere emotion” is now acknowledged to be of the primal 
stuff of consciousness. Thought is but its servant: a skilled 
and often arrogant servant, with a constant tendency to usurpa- 
tion. At bottom, then, we shall find in emotion the power 
which drives the mental machinery; a power as strong as 
steam, though as evanescent unless it be put to work. Without 
it, the will would be dormant, and the intellect lapse into a 
calculating machine. As for its transitoriness, incessant change 
has been defined by Bergson as a necessary condition of con- 
sciousness, indeed of life.t 

Further, “the heart has its reasons which the mind knows 
not of.” It is a matter of experience that in our moments of 
deep emotion, transitory though they be, we plunge deeper into 
the reality of things than we can hope to do in hours of the 
most brilliant argument. At the touch of passion doors fly 
open which logic has battered on in vain: for passion rouses to 
activity not merely the mind, but the whole vitality of man. It 
is the lover, the poet, the mourner, the convert, who shares for 
‘a moment the mystic’s privilege of lifting that Veil of Isis which 
science handles so helplessly, leaving only her dirty finger- 
marks behind. The heart, eager and restless, goes out into 
the unknown, and brings home, literally and actually, “fresh 
food for thought.” Hence those who “ feel to think ” are likely 
to possess a richer, more real, if less orderly, experience than 
those who “think to feel.” 

This psychological law, easily proved in regard to earthly 
matters, holds good also upon the supersensual plane. It 
was expressed once for all by one of the earliest of English 
mystics when he said of God, “ By love He may be gotten and_ 
holden, but by thought of understanding never.”2 “The first 
thing which enlightens our eyes,” says Ruysbroeck, is the vzvid 
emotion which floods and irradiates consciousness when it receives 
a message from the spiritual world. This exalted feeling, this 
desire, not the neat deductions of logic, the apologist’s “ proofs ” 
of the existence of the Absolute, unseals the eyes to things unseen 


* H. Bergson, ‘‘ Les Données Immédiates de la Conscience,” cap. ii. 
2 «The Cloud of Unknowing,” cap. vi. (B. M. Harl. 674). 


ar | 


58 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


before. He continues, “Of this abrupt emotion is born from the 
side of man the second point: that is to say, a concentration of 
all the interior and exterior forces in the unity of the spirit and 
in the bonds of love.” Here we see emotion at its proper 
work, as the spring and stimulant of action; the movement of 
desire passing over at once into the act of concentration, the 
gathering up of all the powers of the self into a state of deter- 
mined attention, which is the business of the Will. 

Now this act of perfect concentration, the passionate focus- 
ing of the self upon one point, when it is applied in “the unity 
of the spirit and the bonds of love” to real and transcendental 
things, constitutes in the technical language of mysticism the 
state of meditation or recollection:? a condition which is 
peculiarly characteristic of the mystical consciousness, and is 
the necessary prelude of pure contemplation, that state in 
which the mystic enters into communion with Reality. 

We have then arrived so far in our description of the 
mechanism of the mystic. Possessed like other men of 
powers of feeling, thought, and will, it is essential that his 
love and his determination, even more than his thought, should 
be set upon Transcendent Reality. He must feel a strong 
emotional attraction toward the supersensual Object of his 
quest: that love which scholastic philosophy defined as the 
force or power which causes every creature to follow out the 
trend of its own nature. Of this must be born the will to_ 
attain communion with that Absolute Object. This will, this 
burning and active desire, must crystallize into and express 
itself by that definite and conscious concentration of the whole 
self upon the Object, which precedes the contemplative state. 
We see already how far astray are those who look upon the 
mystical temperament as passive in type. 

Our next concern, then, would seem to be with this con- 
dition of contemplation: what it does and whither it leads. 
What is (a) its psychological explanation and (6) its empirical 
value? Now, in dealing with this, and other rare mental 
conditions, we are of course trying to describe from without 
that which can only adequately be described from within; 
which is as much as to say that only mystics can really write 


* «*L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. ii. cap. iv. (trans. Maeterlinck). 
* See below, Pt. II. Cap. VI, 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 59 


about mysticism. Fortunately, many mystics have so written ; 
and we, from their experiences and from the explorations of 
| psychology upon another plane, are able to make certain ele- 
‘mentary deductions. It appears generally from these that the 
‘act of contemplation is for the mystic a psychic gateway; a 
‘method of going from one state of consciousness to another. 
In technical language it is the condition under which he shifts 
his “field of perception ” and_obtains his characteristic outlook 
on the universe. That there is such a characteristic outlook, 
peculiar. to no creed or race, is proved by the history of mysti- 
cism; which demonstrates plainly enough that there is developed 
in some men another sort of consciousness, another “sense,” 
beyond those normal qualities of the self which we have 
discussed. This “sense” has attachments at each point to 
emotion, to intellect, and to will. It can express itself under 
each of the aspects which these terms connote. Yet it differs 
from and transcends the emotional, intellectual, and volitional 
life of ordinary men. It was recognized by Plato as that 
consciousness which could apprehend the real world of the 
Ideas. Its development is the final object of that education 

hich his “ Republic” describes. It is called by Plotinus 
“ Another intellect, different from that which reasons and is 
denominated rational.” Its business, he says, is the percep- 
tion of the supersensual—or, in Neoplatonic language, the 
intelligible world. It is the sense which, in the words of the 
“Theologia Germanica,” has “the power of seeing into eternity,” ? 
the “mysterious eye of the soul” by which St. Augustine saw 
“the light that never changes.”3 It is, says Al Ghazzali, a 
Persian mystic of the eleventh century, “like an immediate 
perception, as if one touched its object with one’s hand.’4 In 
the words of his great Christian successor, St. Bernard, “it may 
be defined as the soul’s true unerring intuition, the unhesitating 
apprehension of truth” :5 which “simple vision of truth,” says 
St. Thomas Aquinas, “ends in a movement of desire.” © 

It is infused with burning love, for it seems to its possessors 

* Plotinus, Ennead vi. 9. 

2 “‘ Theologia Germanica,”’ cap. vii. (trans. Winkworth). 

3 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. x. 

4 A. Schmélders, “ Essai sur les Ecoles Philosophique chez les Arabes,” p. 68, 


5 ** De Consideratione,” bk. ii. cap. ii. 
¢ <¢ Summa Theologica,” ii. ii. q. clxxx. art. 3. eds. 1 and 3. 


60 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


to be primarily a movement of the heart: with intellectual | 
subtlety, for its ardour is wholly spent upon the most sublime | 
object of thought : with unflinching will, for its adventures are 
undertaken in the teeth of the natural doubts, prejudices, | 
languors, and self-indulgence of man. These adventures, looked ; 
upon by those who stay at home as a form of the Higher ' 
Laziness, are in reality the last and most arduous labours 
which humanity is called to perform. They are the only 
known methods by which we can come into conscious posses- 
sion of all our powers ; and, rising from the lower to the higher 
levels of consciousness, become aware of that larger life in 
which we are immersed, attain communion with the transcendent 
Personality in Whom that life is resumed. 

Mary has chosen the better, not the idler part. In vain 
does sardonic common sense, confronted with the contempla- 
tive type, reiterate the sneer of Mucius, “Encore sont-ils heureux 
que la pauvre Marthe leur fasse la cuisine.” It remains a para- 
dox of the mystics that the passivity at which they appear to 
aim is really a state of the most intense activity: more, tha! i 
where it is wholly absent no great creative action can taku | 
place. In it, the superficial self compels itself to be still, ir.; 
order that it may liberate another more deep-seated piatek | 
which is, in the ecstasy of the contemplative genius, raised to | 
the highest pitch of efficiency. ; 

“This restful labouring,” said Walter Hilton, “is full far 
from fleshly idleness and from blind security. It is full of 
spiritual working, but it is called rest, for that grace looseth 
the heavy yoke of fleshly love from the soul and maketh it 
mighty and free through the gift of spiritual love for to work 
gladly, softly, and delectably. ... Therefore it is called an 
holy zdleness and a vest most busy, and so it is in regard of 
stillness from the great crying of the beastly noise of fleshly 
desires,” ? 

If those who have cultivated this latent power be correct in . 
their statements, the self was mistaken in supposing herself to 
be entirely shut off from the true external universe. She has 
it seems, certain tentacles which, once she learns to uncurl them 
will stretch sensitive fingers far beyond that limiting envelope 
in which her normal consciousness is contained, and obtain data ° 





* Walter Hilton, ‘‘ The Scale of Perfection,’’ bk. iii. cap. x. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 61 


from which she can construct a higher reality than that which 
can be deduced from the reports of the senses. The fully 
educated and completely conscious human soul can open, then, 
as an anemone does, and #uzow the ocean in which she is bathed. 
This act, this condition of consciousness, in which barriers are 
obliterated, the Absolute flows in on us, and we, rushing out to 
its embrace, “find and feel the Infinite above all reason and 
above all knowledge,” ! is the true “mystical state.” The value 
of contemplation is that it tends to produce this state, and 
‘turns the “lower servitude” in which the natural man lives 
under the sway of his earthly environment to the “higher 
servitude” of fully conscious dependence on that Reality “in 
Whom we live and move and have our being.” 

What then, we ask, is the nature of this special sense—this 
transcendental consciousness — and how does contemplation 
liberate it? 

Any attempt to answer this question brings upon the scene 
another aspect of man’s psychic life: an aspect which is of 
paramount importance to the student of the mystic type. We 
have reviewed the chief aspects under which the normal self 
reacts upon experience by means of its surface consciousness : a 
consciousness which has been trained through long ages to deal 
with those concrete matters which make up the universe of 
sense. We know, however, that the personality of man is a far 
deeper and more mysterious thing than the sum of his con- 
scious feeling, thought, and will: that this superficial self—this 
Ego of which each of us is aware—hardly counts in comparison 
with those deeps of being which it hides. “There is a root or 
depth in thee,” says Law, “from whence all these faculties come 
forth as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of a 
tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund, or bottom, of 
the soul. This depth is the unity, the Eternity, I had almost 
said the infinity of thy soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can 
satisfy it, or give it any rest, but the infinity of God.” 2 

Since normal man, by means of his feeling, thought, and 
will, is utterly unable to set up relations with spiritual reality, it 
is clearly in this depth of being—in these unplumbed levels of 


* Ruysbroeck, ‘* De Septem Gradibus Amoris,” cap. xiv. 
2 “©The Spirit of Prayer” (‘‘ Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law,”’ 


_p- 14). 
\ ; ; ‘ 


62 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


personality—that we must search, if we would find the organ, 
the power, by which he is to achieve the mystic quest. That 
alteration of consciousness which takes place in contemplation 
can only mean the emergence from this “fund or bottom of the 
soul” of some faculty which diurnal life keeps hidden “in the 
deeps.” 

Modern psychology has summed up man’s hiddenness in that 
doctrine of the subconscious or subliminal personality which 
looms so large in recent apologetic literature. It has so dwelt 
upon and defined this vague and shadowy region—which is 
really less a “region” than a useful name—that it sometimes 
seems to know more about the subconscious than about the 
conscious life of man. There it finds, side by side, the sources 
of his most animal instincts, his least explicable powers, his 
most spiritual intuitions: the “ape and tiger,” and the “soul.” 
Genius and prophecy, table-turning and clairvoyance, hypnotism, 
hysteria, and “Christian” science—all are explained by the 
“subconscious mind.” In its pious and apologetic moods, it 
has told us ad nauseam that “God speaks to man in the sub- 
consciousness,” * and has succeeded in making the subliminal 
self into the Mesopotamia of Liberal Christianity. The result 
is that popular psychology tends more and more to personify 
and exalt the “subconscious.” Forgetting the salutary warning 
administered by a living writer, when he told us that man has 
not only a “Shadowy Companion,” but a “ Muddy Companion ” 
too,? it represents the subliminal self as an imprisoned angel, a 
mystic creature possessed of supernatural powers. Stevenson 
was far more scientific when he described the subconscious 
personality of Dr. Jekyll as being Mr, Hyde: for the “subcon- 
sciousness” is simply the aggregate of those powers, parts, or 
qualities of the whole self which at any given moment are not 
conscious, or that the Ego is not conscious of. Included in the 
subconscious region of an average healthy man are all those 
automatic activities by which the life of the body is carried on: 
all those “uncivilized ” instincts and vices, those remains of the 
ancestral savage which education has forced out of the stream 
of consciousness ; all those aspirations for which the busy life 


* Cutten, ‘‘ Psychological Phenomena of Christianity,” p. 18. James, ‘‘ Varieties 
of Religious Experience,’’ p. 515. Schofield, ‘‘ The Unconscious Mind,” p. 92. 
2 Arthur Machen, ‘‘ Hieroglyphics,’’ p. 124. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 63 


of the world leaves no place. Hence in normal men the 
best and the worst, the most savage and most spiritual 
parts of the character, are bottled up “below the threshold.” 
Often the partisans of the “subconscious” forget to mention 
this. 

It follows, then, that whilst we shall find it convenient and 
indeed necessary to avail ourselves of the symbols and diagrams 
of psychology in tracking out the mystic way, we must not 
forget the large and vague significance which attaches to these 
symbols, or allow ourselves to use the “subconscious” as the 
equivalent of man’s transcendental sense. Here the old mystics, 
I think, displayed a more scientific spirit, a more delicate power 
of analysis, than the new psychologists. They, too, were aware 
that in normal men the spiritual sense lies below the threshold 
of consciousness. Though they had not at their command the 
astonishing spatial metaphors of the modern school, and could 
not describe man’s ascent toward God in those picturesque 
terms of paths and levels, uprushes, margins, and fields, which 
now come so naturally to investigators of the spiritual life, they 
leave us in no doubt as to their view of the facts. Further, 
man’s spiritual history primarily meant for them, as it means 
for us, the emergence of this transcendental sense from its 
prison; its capture of the field of consciousness, and the 
opening up of those paths which permit the inflow of a 
larger spiritual life, the perception of a higher reality. This, 
in so far as it was an isolated act, was “contemplation.” When 
it was part of the general life process, and permanent, they 
called it the New Birth, which “maketh alive.” The faculty or 
personality concerned in the “New Birth”—the “ spiritual man,” 
capable of the spiritual vision and life, which was dissociated 
from the “earthly man” adapted only to the natural life—was 
always distinguished by them very sharply from the total 
personality, conscious or subconscious. It was something 
definite ; a bit or spot of man which, belonging not to Time 
but to Eternity, was different in kind from the rest of his 
human nature, framed in all respects to meet the demands of 
the merely natural world. 

The business of the mystic in the eyes of these old 
specialists was to remake, transmute, his total personality in 
the interest of his spiritual self; to bring it out of the 


4 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


hiddenness, and unify himself about it as a centre, thus 
‘putting on divine humanity.” 

It is interesting to note that the most recent teaching of 
Rudolph Eucken is in this respect a pure and practical 
mysticism, though his conclusions have not been reached by 
the mystic’s road. The “redemptive remaking of personality,” 
in conformity with the transcendent or spiritual life of the 
universe, is for him the central necessity of human life. The 
life of reality, he says, is spiritual and heroic: an act, not a 
thought.: Further, Eucken, like the mystics, declares that 
there is a definite transcendental principle in man.2 He cails it 
the Gemiith, the heart or core of personality; and there, he 
says, “God and man initially meet.” He invites us, as we have 
seen,3 to distinguish in man two separate grades of being; “the 
narrower and the larger life, the life that is straitened and 
finite, and can never transcend itself, and an infinite life through 
which he enjoys communion with the immensity and the truth 
of the universe.” 4 At bottom, all the books of the mystics tell 
us no more and no less; but their practical instructions in the 
art of self-transcendence, by which man may appropriate that 
infinite life, far excel those of the philosopher in lucidity and 
exactness. 

The divine nucleus, the point of contact between man’s life 
and the divine life in which it is immersed and sustained; 
has been given many names in course of the development of 
mystical doctrine. All clearly mean the same thing, though 
emphasizing different aspects of its life. Sometimes it is called 
the Synteresis,5 the keeper or preserver of his being: some- 
times the Spark of the Soul, the /Finxklein of the German 
mystics: sometimes its Apex, the point at which it touches the 
heavens. Then, with a sudden flight to the other end of the 
symbolic scale, and in order to emphasize its oneness with pure 
Being, rather than its difference from mere nature, it is called 
the Ground of the Soul, the foundation or basal stuff whence 
springs all spiritual life. 


* Boyce Gibson, ‘‘ Rudolph Eucken’s Philosophy,”’ p. 17. 

2 Ibid., p. 104. 3 Supra, Cap. Il. 

4 Eucken, ‘‘ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 81. 

5 An interesting discussion of the term ‘‘ Synteresis ” will be found in Dr. Inge’s 
‘* Christian Mysticism,’? Appendix C, pp. 359, 360. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 65 


Clearly all these guesses and suggestions aim at one goal, 
and are to be understood in a purely symbolic sense; for, as 
Malaval observed in answer to his disciples’ anxious inquiries 
on this subject, “since the soul of man is a spiritual thing and 
thus cannot have divisions or parts, consequently it cannot have 
height or depth, summit or surface. But because we judge 
Spiritual things by the help of material things, since we know 
these better and they are more familiar to us, we call the 
highest of all forms of conception the summit, and the easier 
way of comprehending things the surface, of the under- 
standing.” ? 

Here at any rate, whatever name we may choose to give it, 
is the organ of man’s spiritual consciousness ; the place where 
he meets the Absolute, the germ of his real life. Here is the 
seat of that deep “Transcendental Feeling,” the “beginning 
and end of metaphysics” which is, says Professor Stewart, “ at 
once the solemn sense of Timeless Being—of ‘That which was 
and is and ever shall be’ overshadowing us—and the con- 
viction that Life is good.” “I hold,” says the same writer, 
“that it is in Transcendental Feeling, manifested normally as 
Faith in the Value of Life, and ecstatically as sense of Timeless 
Being, and not in Thought proceeding by way of speculative 
construction, that Consciousness comes nearest to the object 
of metaphysics, Ultimate Reality.” 2 

The existence of such a “sense,” such an integral part or 
function of the complete human being, has been affirmed and 
dwelt upon not only by the mystics, but by seers and teachers 
of all times and creeds: by Egypt, Greece, and India, the 
poets, the fakirs, the philosophers, and the saints. A belief in 
its actuality is the pivot of the Christian position: the founda- 
tion and justification of mysticism, asceticism, the whole 
machinery of the self-renouncing life. That there is an 
extreme point at which man’s nature touches the Absolute: 
that his ground, or substance, his true being, is penetrated by 
the Divine Life which constitutes the underlying reality of 


* “La Pratique de la Vraye Theologie Mystique,” vol. i. p. 204. 

2 J. A. Stewart, ‘‘The Myths of Plato,” pp. 41, 43. Perhaps I may point out that 
this Transcendental Feeling—the ultimate material of poetry—has, like the mystic 
consciousness, a dual perception of Reality: static being and dynamic life. See 
above, p. 42. 

F Ae i case i : 


66 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


things ; this is the basis on which the whole mystic claim of 
possible union with God must rest. Here, they say, is our link 
with reality; and in this place alone can be celebrated the 
“marriage from which the Lord comes.” ! 

To use another of their diagrams, it is thanks to the exist- 
ence within him of this immortal spark from the central fire, 
that man is implicitly a “child of the infinite.” The mystic 
way must therefore be a life, a discipline, which will so alter 
the constituents of his mental life as to include this spark 
within the conscious field, bring it out of the hiddenness, from 
those deep levels where it sustains and guides his normal 
existence, and make it the dominant element round which his 
personality is arranged. The revolution in which this is 
effected begins with the New Birth, which has been described 


under other terms by Rudolph Eucken, as the indispensable - 


preliminary of an “independent spiritual life” in man? 


Now it is clear that under ordinary conditions, and save for - 
sudden gusts of “Transcendental Feeling” induced by some 
saving madness such as Religion, Art, or Love, the superficial © 
self knows nothing of the attitude of this silent watcher—this— 
“ Dweller in the Innermost”—towards the incoming messages 
of the external world: nor of the activities which they awake in 


it. Wholly taken up by the sense-world, and the messages she 
receives from it, she knows nothing of the relations which exist 
between this subject and the unattainable Object of all thought. 
But by a deliberate inattention to the messages of the senses, 
such as that which is induced by contemplation, the mystic 
brings the ground of the soul, the seat of ‘“ Transcendental 


Feeling,” within the area of consciousness: making it amenable - 
to the activity of the will. The contemplative subject, becom-” 


ing unaware of his usual and largely fictitious “ external world,” 
another and more substantial set of perceptions, which never 


4 
1 
¢ 
. 
4 
‘ 
in 
Fi 
y 
ig 
i 
a 
4 
4h 


have their chance under normal conditions, rise to the surface. — 
Sometimes these unite with the normal reasoning faculties. — 


More often, they supersede them. Some such exchange, such — 


a 


“losing to find,’ appears to be necessary, if man’s transcen- 


dental powers are to have their full chance. : 
“The two eyes of the soul of man,” says the “Theologia 


? Tauler, Sermon on St. Augustine (‘The Inner Way,” p. 162). 
* <‘ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 146. See also below, Pt. I. Cap. V. 





MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 67 


Germanica” in an apt and vigorous metaphor, “cannot both 
perform their work at once: but if the soul shall see with the 
right eye into eternity, then the left eye must close itself and 
refrain from working, and be as though it were dead. For if 
the left eye be fulfilling its office toward outward things; that 
is, holding converse with time and the creatures; then must 
the right eye be hindered in its working; that is, in its con- 
templation. Therefore whosoever will have the one must let 
the other go; for ‘no man can serve two masters,’”! 

There is within us an immense capacity for perception, for 
the receiving of messages from outside ; and a very little con- 
sciousness which deals with them. It is as if one telegraph 
operator were placed in charge of a multitude of lines: all may 
be in action, but he can only attend to one at a time. In 
popular language, there is not enough consciousness to go. 
round, Even upon the sensual plane, no one can be aware of 
more than a few things at once. These fill the centre of our 
field of consciousness: as the object on which we happen to 
have focused our vision dominates our field of sight. The 
other matters within that field retreat to the margin. We know, 
dimly, that they are there; but we pay them no attention and 
should hardly miss them if they ceased to exist. 

Transcendental matters are, for most of us, always beyond 
the margin ; because most of us have given up our whole con- 
sciousness to the occupation of the senses, and permitted them 
to construct there a universe in which we are contented to 
remain. Only in certain occult and mystic states: in orison, 


contemplation, ecstasy and their allied conditions; does the 


, 
- 


self contrive to turn out the usual tenants, shut the “gateways 
of the flesh,” and let those submerged powers which are capable 
of picking up messages from another plane of being have their 


*turn. Then it is the sensual world which retreats beyond the 


margin, and another landscape that rushes in. At last, then, 
we begin to see something of what contemplation does for its 
initiates. It is one of the many names applied to that chain 
of processes which have for their object this alteration of the 
mental equilibrium : the putting to sleep of that “ Normal Self” 
which usually wakes, and the awakening of that “ Transcen- 


* “Theologia Germanica,” cap. vii. A Kempis has the same metaphor 
Compare ‘‘ De Imitatione Christi,” 1. iii. cap. 38. 


68 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


dental Self” which usually sleeps. To man, “ meeting-point 
of various stages of reality,” is given—though he seldom con- 
siders it—this unique power of choosing his universe. 

The extraordinary phenomenon known as double or disin- 
tegrated personality may perhaps give us a hint as to the 
mechanical nature of the change which contemplation effects. 
In this psychic malady the total character of the patient is 
split up; a certain group of qualities are, as} it were, abstracted 
from the surface-consciousness and so closely associated as to 
form in themselves a complete “character” or “ personality "— 
necessarily poles asunder from the “character” which the self 
usually shows to the world, since it consists exclusively of those 
elements which are omitted from it. Thus in the classical 
case of Miss Beauchamp, the investigator, Dr. Morton Prince, 
called the three chief “ personalities,” from their ruling char- 
acteristics, “ the Saint,” “the Woman,” and “the Devil.” The 
totality of character which composed the “real Miss Beau- 


champ” had split up into these mutually opposing types; 


each of which was excessive, because withdrawn from the 
control of the rest. When, voluntarily or involuntarily, the 
personality which had possession of the field of consciousness 


was lulled to sleep, one of the others emerged. Hypnotism © 


was one of the means which most easily effected this change. 

Now in persons of mystical genius, the qualities which the 
stress of normal life tends to keep below the threshold of con- 
sciousness are of enormous strength. In these natural explorers 


of Eternity the “transcendental faculty,” the “eye of the soul,” — 
is not merely present in embryo, but is highly developed; and — 
is combined with great emotional and volitional power. The 


result of the segregation of such qualities below the threshold 
of consciousness is to remove from them the friction of those 
counterbalancing traits in the surface mind with which they 
might collide. They are “in the hiddenness,” as Jacob Boehme 
would say. There they develop unchecked, until a point is 
reached at which their strength is such that they break their 
bounds and emerge into the conscious field: either temporarily 
dominating the subject as in ecstasy, or permanently trans- 


muting the old self, as in the “unitive life.” The attainment of — 


this point is accelerated by such processes as those of contem- 


* Morton Prince, ‘* The Dissociation of a Personality,” p. 16. 


- 


-— 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 69 


plation. These processes—not themselves mystical, but merely 
the mechanical conditions of mystical experience—are classed 
by psychologists with the states of dream and reverie, and the 
conditions loosely called hypnotic. In them the normal surface 
consciousness is deliberately or involuntarily lulled, and images or 
faculties from “beyond the threshold” are able to take its place. 

Of course these images or faculties may or may not be more 
valuable than those already present in the surface-conscious- 
ness, In the ordinary subject, often enough, they are but the 
odds and ends for which the superficial mind has found no 
use. In the mystic, they are of a very different order: and 
this fact justifies the means which he instinctively employs 
to secure their emergence. Indian mysticism founds its 
external system almost wholly on (a) Ascetism, the domina- 
tion of the senses, and (4) the deliberate practice of self- 
hypnotization ; either by fixing the eyes on a near object, or 
by the rhythmic repetition of the mantra or sacred word. By 
these complementary forms of discipline, the pull of the 
phenomenal world is diminished and the mind is placed at the 
disposal of the subconscious powers. Dancing, music, and 
other exaggerations of natural rhythm have been pressed into 
the same service by the Greek initiates of Dionysus, by the 
Gnostics, by innumerable other mystic cults. That these pro- 
ceedings do effect a remarkable change in the human conscious- 
ness is proved by experience: though how and why they do it 
is as yet little understood. Such artificial and deliberate pro- 
duction of ecstasy is against the whole instinct of the Christian 
contemplatives ; but here and there amongst them also we find 
instances in which ecstatic trance or lucidity, the liberation of . 
the “transcendental sense,’ was inadvertently produced by - 
purely physical means. Thus Jacob Boehme, the “ Teutonic ' 
theosopher,” having one day as he sat in his room “gazed 
fixedly upon a burnished pewter dish which reflected the 
sunshine with great brilliance,” fell into an inward ecstasy, and - 
it seemed to him as if he could look into the principles and 
deepest foundations of things.t The contemplation of running 
water had the same effect on St. Ignatius Loyola. Sitting on 
the bank of a river one day, and facing the stream, which was 
running deep, “the eyes of his mind were opened, not so as to 


* Martensen, ‘‘ Jacob Boehme,” p. 7. 


70 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


see any kind of vision, but so as to understand and comprehend 


spiritual things .. . and this with such clearness that for him — 
all these things were made new.”! This method of attain- — 
ing to mental lucidity by a narrowing and simplification of 


the conscious field, finds an apt parallel in the practice of Em- 


manuel Kant, who “found that he could better engage in | 
philosophical thought while gazing steadily at a neighbouring ~ 


church steeple.” 2 


It need hardly be said that rationalistic writers, ignoring the ~ 





parallels offered by the artistic and philosophic temperaments, ~ 


have seized eagerly upon the evidence afforded by such ~ 
instances of apparent mono-ideism and self-hypnotization in the — 


lives of the mystics, and by the physical disturbances which 
accompany the ecstatic trance, and sought by its application to 
attribute all the abnormal perceptions of contemplative genius 


to hysteria or other disease. They have not hesitated to call 


St. Paul an epileptic, St. Teresa the “patron saint of 
hysterics” ; and have found room for most of their spiritual 


kindred in various departments of the pathological museum. — 
They have been helped in this grateful task by the acknow- ~ 
ledged fact that the great contemplatives, though almost always © 


persons of robust intelligence and marked practical or intellec- 


a. ene ee ee ee ee 


SS 


——— a, 


———_ 


tual ability-—-Plotinus, St. Bernard, the two S.S. Catherine, — 


St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, and the Sifi poets Jami’ and 
Jelalu ’d Din are cases in point—have often suffered from bad 
physical health. More, their mystical activities have generally 
reacted upon their bodies in a definite and special way; 


producing in several cases a particular kind of illness and of © 


est et tent 


ee 


physical disability, accompanied by pains and functional dis- j 
turbances for which no organic cause could be discovered, unless — 
that cause were the immense strain which exalted spirit puts © 


upon a body which is adapted to a very different form — 


of life. 


It is certain that the abnormal and highly sensitized type of © 
mind which we call mystical does frequently, but not always, pro- — 
duce or accompany strange and inexplicable modifications of the © 


physical organism with which it is linked. The supernatural is 


not here in question, except in so far as we are inclined to give — 


* Testament, cap. iii. : 
? Starbuck, *‘ The Psychology of Religion,” p. 388.. 


a eT 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 71 


that name to natural phenomena which we do not understand. 
Such instances of psycho-physical parallelism as the stigmatiza- 
tions of the saints—and indeed of other suggestible subjects 
hardly to be ranked as saints—will occur to anyone.t I here 
_ offer to the reader another less discussed and more extraordinary 
example of the modifying influence of the spirit on the supposed 
“laws” of bodily life. 

We know, as a historical fact, unusually well attested by 
contemporary evidence and quite outside the sphere of hagio- 
graphic romance, that both St. Catherine of Siena and her 
namesake St. Catherine of Genoa—active women as well as 
ecstatics, the first a philanthropist, reformer, and politician, 
the second an original theologian and for many years the highly 
efficient matron of a large hospital—lived, in the first case for 
years, in the second for constantly repeated periods of many 
weeks, without other food than the consecrated Host which they 
received at Holy Communion. They did this, not by way of 
difficult obedience to a pious vow, but because they could not 
live in any other way. Whilst fasting, they were well and 
active, capable of dealing with the innumerable responsibilities 
which filled their lives. But the attempt to eat even a few 
mouthfuls—and this attempt was constantly repeated, for, like 
all true saints, they detested eccentricity 2—at once made them 
ill and had to be abandoned as useless.3 | 

In spite of the researches of Murisier,4 Janet,5 Ribot,6 and 
other psychologists, and their persevering attempts to find a 
pathological explanation which will fit all mystic facts, this and 
other marked physical peculiarities which accompany the mys- 
tical temperament belong as yet to the unsolved problems of 
humanity. They need to be removed both from the sphere of 
marvel and from that of disease—into which enthusiastic friends 

* See, for instances, Cutten, ‘‘ The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity,” 
Cap. vill. 

- ‘* Singularity,’”’ says Gertrude More, ‘‘isa vice which Thou extreamly hatest ” 
(‘‘ The Spiritual Exercises of the most vertuous and religious Dame Gertrude More,”’’ 
p- 40). All the best and sanest of the mystics are of the same opinion. 

3 See E. Gardner, ‘St. Catherine of Siena,’’ pp. 12 and 48; and F. von Higel, 
‘* The Mystical Element of Religion,’’ vol. i. p. 135. 

4 * Les Maladies des Sentiments Religieux.”’ 

5 “T’Etat Mentale des Hysteriques,” and ‘‘ Une Extatique’’ (Bulletin de 


Pinstitut Psychologique, 1901). 
6 **La Psychologie des Sentiments,” 1896. 


72 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


and foes force them by turn—to the sphere of pure psychology ; 
and there studied dispassionately with the attention which we — 
so willingly bestow on the less interesting eccentricities of de- 
generacy and vice. Their existence no more discredits the © 
sanity of mysticism or the validity of its results than the 
unstable nervous condition usually noticed in artists—who 
share to some extent the mystic’s apprehension of the Real—. | 
discredits art. ‘“In such cases as Kant and Beethoven,” says | 
Von Hiigel justly, “a classifier of humanity according to its 
psycho-physical phenomena alone would put these great dis- 
coverers and creators, without hesitation, amongst hopeless and 
useless hypochondriacs.” ? 

In the case of the mystics the disease of hysteria, with its 
astounding variety of mental symptoms, its strange power of 
disintegrating, rearranging and enhancing the elements of 
consciousness, its tendencies to automatism and ecstasy, has 
been most often invoked to provide an explanation of the 
observed phenomena, This is as if one sought the source of 
the genius of Taglioni in the symptoms of St. Vitus’s dance. 
Both the art and the disease have to do with bodily movements. _ 
So too both mysticism and hysteria have to do with the 
domination of consciousness by one fixed and intense idea or 
intuition, which rules the life and is able to produce amazing 
physical and psychical results. In the hysteric patient this 
idea is often trivial or morbid 2 but has become—thanks to the 
selfs unstable mental condition—an obsession. In the mystic 
the dominant idea is a great one: so great in fact that when it 
is received in its completeness by the human consciousness, 
almost of necessity it ousts all else. It is nothing less than the 
idea or perception of the transcendent reality and presence of 
God. Hence the mono-ideism of the mystic is rational, whilst 
that of the hysteric patient is invariably irrational. 

On the whole then, whilst psycho-physical relations remain 
so little understood, it would seem more prudent, and certainly 
more scientific, to withhold our judgment on the meaning of 
the psycho-physical phenomena which accompany the mystic 
life ; instead of basing destructive criticism on facts which are 
avowedly mysterious and at least capable of more than one 

™ Op. cit., vol. ii. p. 42. 
* For examples consult Pierre Janet, of. cé?. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 73 


interpretation. To deduce the nature of a compound from the 
character of its by-products is notoriously unsafe. 

Our bodies are animal things, made for animal activities. 
When a spirit of unusual ardour insists on using its nerve- 
cells for other activities, they kick against the pricks, and 
inflict, as the mystics themselves acknowledge, the penalty of 
“mystical ill-health.” “Believe me, children,” says » Tauler, 
“one who would know much about these high matters would 
‘often have to keep his bed, for his bodily frame could not 
‘support it.’ “I cause thee extreme pain of body,” says the 
‘voice of Love to Mechthild of Magdeburg. “If I gave myself 
‘to thee as often as thou wouldst have me, I should deprive 
‘myself of the sweet shelter I have of thee in this world, for 
a thousand bodies could not protect a loving soul from her 
desire. Therefore the higher the love the greater the pain.”2 

On the other hand the exalted personality of the mystic— 
his self-discipline, his heroic acceptance of labour and suffering, 
and his inflexible will—raises to a higher term that normal 
power of mind over body which all possess. Also the con- 
templative state—like the hypnotic state in a healthy person 
—seems to enhance life by throwing open deeper levels of 
personality. The self then drinks at a fountain which is fed 
by the Universal Life: the “life of the Spirit,” to use the 
language of Eucken’s philosophy. True ecstasy is notoriously 
life-enhancing. In it a bracing contact with Reality seems 
to take place, and as a result the subject is himself more real 
Often, says St. Teresa, even the sick come forth from ecstasy 
healthy and with new strength; for something great is then 
given to the soul.3 Contact has been set up with levels of 
being which the daily routine of existence leaves untouched. 
Hence the extraordinary powers of endurance and independence - 
of external conditions which the great ecstatics so often display. 

If we see in the mystics, as some have done, the sporadic 
beginning of a power, a higher consciousness, towards which 
the race slowly tends ; then it seems likely enough that where 
it appears nerves and organs should suffer under a stress to 
which they have not yet become adapted, and that a spirit 


* Sermon for First Sunday after Easter (Winkworth, p. 302). 
2 ** Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,’’ pt. ii. cap. xxv. 
3 Vida, cap. xx. § 29. (Here and throughout I use Lewis’s translation.) 


74 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


more highly organized than its bodily home should a able | 
to impose strange conditions on the flesh. When man first: 
stood upright, a body long accustomed to go on all fours, legs” 
which had adjusted themselves to bearing but half his weight, 
must have rebelled against this unnatural proceeding ; inflicting 
upon its author much pain and discomfort if not absolute illness, 
It is at least permissible to look upon the strange “psycho-_ 
physical” state common amongst the mystics as just such a 
rebellion on the part of a normal nervous and vascular system 
against the exigencies of a way of life to which it has not yeu 
adjusted itself.t 

In spite of such rebellion, and of the tortures to which it has 
subjected them, the mystics, oddly enough, are a long-lived 
race: an awkward fact for critics of the physiological school. 
To take only a few instances from amongst marked ecstatics, 
St. Hildegarde lived to be eighty-one, Mechthild of Magdeburg 
to eighty-seven, Ruysbroeck to eighty-eight, Suso to seventy, 
St. Catherine of Genoa and St. Peter of Alcantara to sixty= 
three, Madame Guyon to sixty-nine. It seems as though that 
enhanced life which is the reward of mystical surrender enabled 
them to triumph over their bodily disabilities: and to live and 
do the work demanded of them under conditions which would 
have incapacitated ordinary men. 

Such triumphs, which take heroic rank in the history of the 
human mind, have been accomplished as a rule in the same 
way. Like all intuitive persons, all possessors of genius, all 
potential artists—with whom in fact they are closely related— 
the mystics have, in psychological language, “thresholds of 
exceptional mobility.” That is to say, a very slight effort, a 
very slight departure from normal conditions, will permit their 
latent or “ subliminal” powers to emerge and occupy the mental 
field. A “mobile threshold” may make a man a genius, a 
lunatic, or a saint. All depends upon the character of the 
emerging powers. In the great mystic, these powers, these 
mighty tracts of personality lying below the level of normal 

* Mr. Boyce Gibson has lately drawn a striking parallel between the ferment and 
‘*interior uproar”’ of adolescence and the profound disturbances which mark man’s 
entry into a conscious spiritual life. His remarks are even more applicable to the 
drastic rearrangement of personality which takes place in the case of the mystic, 


whose spiritual life is more intense than that of other men. See Boyce Gibson. 
‘*God with Us,” 1909, cap. ili. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 75 | 


consciousness, are of unusual richness; and cannot be 
accounted for in terms of pathology. “If it be true,’ says 
Delacroix, “that the great mystics have not wholly escaped 
those nervous blemishes which mark nearly all exceptional 
organizations, there is in them a vital and creative power, 
a constructive logic, an extended scale of realization—in a 
word a genius—which is, in truth, their essential quality. ... 
The great mystics, creators and inventors who have found a 
new form of life and have justified it... join, upon the 
highest summits of the human spirit, the great simplifiers 
of the world.” ! 

The truth, then, so far as we know it at present, seems to be | 
that those powers which are in contact with the Transcendental | 
Order, and which constitute at the lowest estimate half the self, 
are dormant in ordinary men, whose time and interest are, 
wholly occupied in responding to the stimuli of the world of 
sense. With those latent powers sleeps the landscape which 
they alone can apprehend. In mystics none of the self is 
always dormant. They have roused the Dweller in the Inner- 
most from its slumbers, and round it have unified their life. 
Heart, Reason, Will are there in full action, drawing their 
energy not from the shadow-show of sense, but from the deeps 
of true Being; where a lamp is lit, and a consciousness awake, 
of which the sleepy crowd remains oblivious. He who says the 
mystic is but half a man, states the exact opposite of the truth. 
Only the mystic can be called a whole man, since in others half 
the powers of the self always sleep. This wholeness of expe- 
rience is much insisted on by the mystics. Thus the Divine 
Voice says to St. Catherine of Siena, “I have also shown thee 
the Bridge and the three general steps, placed there for the 
three powers of the soul, and I have told thee how no one can 
attain to the life of grace unless he has mounted all three steps, 
that is, gathered together all the three powers of the soul in My 
Name,” 2 

In those abnormal types of personality to which we give the 
name of genius, we seem to detect a hint of the relations which 
may exist between these deep levels of being and the crust of 
consciousness. In the poet, the musician, the great mathe- 
matician or inventor, mighty powers lying below the threshold, 


* Delacroix, ‘‘ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” p. iii. ® Dialogo, cap. Ixxxvi, 


76 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


hardly controllable by their owner’s conscious will, clearly take 
a major part in the business of perception and conception. In 
all creative acts, the larger share of the work is done subcon- 
sciously : its emergence is in a sense automatic. This is equally 
true of mystics, artists, philosophers, discoverers, and rulers of 
men. The great religion, invention, work of art, always owes its 
. inception to some sudden uprush of intuitions or ideas for which 
the superficial self cannot account; its execution to powers so far 
beyond the control of that self, that they seem, as their owner 
sometimes says, to “come from beyond.” This is “ inspiration,” 
the opening of the sluices, so that those waters of truth in 
which all life is bathed may rise to the level of consciousness. 
The great teacher, poet, artist, inventor, never aims delibe- 
rately at his effects. He obtains them he knows not how: 
perhaps from a contact of which he is unconscious with that 
creative plane of being which the Siifis call the Constructive 
Spirit, and the Kabalists Yesod, and which both postulate as — 
lying next behind the world of sense. “Sometimes,” said the 
great Alexandrian Jew Philo, “when I have come to my work 
empty, I have suddenly become full; ideas being in an invisible 
manner showered upon me, and implanted in me from on high; — 
so that through the influence of divine inspiration, I have 
become greatly excited, and have known neither the place in 
which I was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what 
I was saying, nor what I was writing; for then I have been 
conscious of a richness of interpretation, an enjoyment of light, 
a most penetrating insight, a most manifest energy in all that 
was to be done; having such an effect on my mind as the 
clearest ocular demonstration would have on the eyes.” This 
is a true creative ecstasy, strictly parallel to the state in which — 
the mystic performs his mighty works. | 
To let oneself go, be quiet, receptive, is the condition under 
which such contact with the Cosmic Life may be obtained. — 
“JT have noticed that when one paints one should think of 
nothing: everything then comes better,” says the young 
Raphael to Leonardo da Vinci.2 The superficial self must 
here acknowledge its own insufficiency, must become the 


™ Quoted by James (‘‘ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 481) from Clissold’s : 
*€ The Prophetic Spirit in Genius and Madness,’’ p. 67. | 
? Mérejkowsky, ‘‘ Le Roman de Leonard de Vinci,” p. 638. | 1a 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY V7 


humble servant of a more profound and vital consciousness. 
The mystics are of the same opinion. “I tried,” says Madame 
Guyon, speaking of her early failures in contemplation, “to 
obtain by effort that which I could only obtain by ceasing all 
effort.”* “The best and noblest way in which thou mayst 
come into this Life,” says Eckhart, “is by keeping silence and 
letting God work and speak. Where all the powers are with- 
drawn from their work and images there is this word spoken 
. .. the more thou canst draw in all thy powers and forget the 
creature the nearer art thou to this, and the more receptive.” 2 
Thus Boehme says to the neophyte,3 “ When both thy intel- 
lect and will are quiet and passive to the expressions of the 
eternal Word and Spirit, and when thy soul is winged up above 
that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imagination 
being locked up by holy abstraction, zen the eternal Hearing, 
Seeing, and Speaking will be revealed in thee. Blessed art 
thou therefore if thou canst stand still from self thinking and 
self willing, and canst stop the wheel of thy imagination and 
senses.” Then, the conscious mind being passive, the more 
divine mind below the threshold—organ of our free creative 
life—can emerge and present its reports. In the words of an 
older mystic, “ The soul, leaving all things and forgetting her- 
self, is immersed in the ocean of Divine Splendour, and illumi- 
nated by the Sublime Abyss of the Unfathomable Wisdom.” 4 
The “ passivity ” of contemplation, then, is a necessary pre- 
liminary of spiritual energy: an essential clearing of the ground. 
It withdraws the tide of consciousness from the shores of sense, 
stops the “wheel of the imagination.” “ The soul,” says Eckhart 
again, “is created in a place between Time and Eternity : with 
its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.” 5 
These, the worlds of Being and Becoming, are the two “stages 
of reality ” which meet in the spirit of man. By cutting us off 
from the temporal plane, the lower kind of reality, Contempla- 
tion gives the eternal plane, and the powers which can commu- 


™ Vie (ed. Poiret, 1720), t. ii. p. 74. 

2 Meister Eckhart, Pred. i. (‘‘ Mystische Schriften,” p. 18). 

3 **Three Dialogues of the Supersensual Life,’’ p. 14. 

4 Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘‘ De Divinis Nominibus,”’ vii. 3. 

5 Pred. xxiii. Eckhart obtained this image from St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘* Summa 
Contra Gentiles,” 1. iii. cap. Ixi. ‘* The intellectual soul is created on the confines 


of eternity and time.” 
f . ‘ 


78 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


nicate with that plane, their chance. Inthe born mystic these 
powers are great, and lie very near the normal threshold of 
consciousness. He has a genius for transcendental—or as he 
would say, divine—discovery in exactly the same way as his 
cousins, the born musician and poet, havea genius for musical or 
poetic discovery. In all three cases, the emergence of these 
higher powers is mysterious, and not least so to those who 
experience it. Psychology on the one hand, theology on the 
other, may offer us diagrams and theories of this proceeding : 
of the strange oscillations of the developing consciousness, the 
fitful visitations of a lucidity and creative power over which the 
self has little or no control; the raptures and griefs of a vision 
by turns granted and withdrawn. But the secret of genius 
still eludes us, as the secret of life eludes the biologist. | 
The utmost we can say of such persons is, that reality pre- 
sents itself to them under abnormal conditions and in abnormal 
terms, and that subject to these conditions and in these terms 
they are bound to deal with it. Thanks to their peculiar mental © 
make up, one aspect of the universe is for them focused so 
sharply that in comparison with it all other images are blurred, 
vague, and unreal. Hence the sacrifice which men of genius— __ 
mystics, artists, inventors—make of their whole lives to this one © 
Object, this one vision of truth, is not self-denial, but rather 
self-fulflment. They gather themselves up from the unreal, in 
order to concentrate on the real. The whole personality then © 
absorbs or enters into communion with certain rhythms or 
harmonies existent in the universe, which the receiving appa-_ 
ratus of other selves cannot take up. “Here is the finger of 
God, a flash of the Will that can!” exclaims Abt Vogler, as 
the sounds grow under his hand. “The numbers came!” says | 
the poet. He knows not how; certainly not by deliberate ” 
intellectation. 
So it is with the mystic. Madame Guyon states in her 
autobiography, that when she was composing her works she 
would experience a sudden and irresistible inclination to take | 
up her pen; though feeling wholly incapable of literary compo- — 
sition, and not even knowing the subject on which she would be > 
impelled to write. If she resisted this impulse it was at the 
cost of the most intense discomfort. She would then begin to 
write with extraordinary swiftness ; words, elaborate arguments, © 


—_— 


—7 


, 
it 





MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY | 79 


and appropriate quotations coming to her without reflec- 
tion, and so quickly that one of her longest books was written 
‘in one and a half days. 

“In writing I saw that I was writing of things which I had 
never seen: and during the time of this manifestation, I was 
given light to perceive that I had in me treasures of knowledge 
and understanding which I did not know that I possessed.” 2 

Similar statements are made of St. Teresa, who declared 
that in writing her books she was powerless to set down any- 
thing but that which her Master put into her mind.3_ So Blake 
said of “ Milton” and “ Jerusalem,” “I have written the poems 
from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty 
lines at a time, without premeditation and even against my will. 
The time it has taken in writing was thus rendered non-existent, 
and an immense poem exists which seems to be the labour of a 
long life, all produced without labour or study.” 4 

These are, of course, extreme forms of that strange power of 
automatic composition, in which words and characters arrive 
and arrange themselves in defiance of their authors’ will, of 
which most poets and novelists possess a trace. Such composi- 
tion is related to the “automatic writing” of “mediums” and 
other sensitives; in which the often disorderly and incoherent 
subliminal mind seizes upon this channel of expression. The 
subliminal mind of the great mystic, however, is not disorderly. 
It is richly endowed and keenly observant—a treasure house, 
not a lumber room—and becomes, in the course of its education, 
a highly disciplined and skilled instrument of knowledge. 
When, therefore, its contents emerge, and are presented to the 
normal consciousness in the form of lucidity, “ auditions,” 
visions, automatic writing, or any other translations of the 
supersensual into the terms of sensual perception, they cannot 
be discredited because the worthless subconscious field of 
feebler natures sometimes manifests: itself in the same way. 
Idiots are often voluble: but many orators are sane. 

Now, to sum up: what are the chief characteristics which 
we have found in this sketch-map of the mental life of man ? 

(1) We have divided that life, arbitrarily enough, along the 


® Vie, t. ii. pp. 120, 229. 2 Op. cit., p. 223. 
3 G. Cunninghame Graham, ‘‘ Santa Teresa,” vol. i. p. 202. 
4 “Letters of William Blake,” April 25, 1803. 


80 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


fluctuating line which psychologists call the “threshold of his 
consciousness” into the surface life and the subconscious deeps. 

(2) In the surface life, though we recognized its essential 
wholeness, we distinguished three outstanding and ever-present 
aspects: the Trinity in Unity of feeling, thought, and will. 
Amongst these, we were obliged to give the primacy to feeling, 
as the power which set the machinery of thought and will to 
work. 

(3) We have seen that the expression of this life takes the 
two complementary forms of comation, or outgoing action, and 
cognition, or indwelling knowledge ; and that the first, which is 
dynamic in type, is largely dependent on the will stimulated by 
the emotions ; whilst the second, which is passive in type, is 
the business of the intellect. They answer to the two main 
aspects which man discerns in the universal life; Being and 
Becoming. 

(4) Neither conation nor cognition—action nor thought—as 
performed by this surface mind, concerned as it is with natural 
existence and dominated by spatial conceptions, is able to set 
up any relations with the Absolute or Transcendental world. 


Such action and thought deal wholly with material supplied 


directly or indirectly by the world of sense. The testimony of 
the mystics, however, and of all persons possessing an “ instinct 
for the Absolute,” points to the existence of a further faculty in 
man; an intuitive power which the circumstances of diurnal life 


tend to keep “below the threshold” of his consciousness, and — 
which thus becomes one of the factors of his “subliminal life.” 


This latent faculty is the primary agent of mysticism, and lives 
a “substantial” life in touch with the real or transcendental 
world. 


(5) Certain processes, of which contemplation has been 
taken as a type, so alter the state of consciousness as to permit 
the emergence of this faculty; which, according as it enters — 
more or less into the conscious life, makes man more or less a 


mystic. 


The mystic life, therefore, involves the emergence from deep - 
levels of man’s transcendental self; its capture of the field of 


consciousness ; and the “conversion” or rearrangement of his 


feeling, thought, and will—his character—about this new centre 


of life, 


a a. 


MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 81 


We state, then, as the conclusion of this chapter, that the 
object of the mystic’s adventure, seen from within, is the 
apprehension of, or direct communion with, that transcendental 
reality which we tried in the last section to define from 
without. 

Here, as in the fulfilment of the highest earthly love, know- 
ledge and communion are the same thing ; we must be “ oned 
with bliss” if we are to be aware of it. The main agent by 
which we may attain this communion resides in that part of the 
self which usually lies below the threshold of our conscious- 
ness. Thence, in certain natures of abnormal richness and 
vitality, and under certain favourable conditions, it may be 
liberated by various devices, such as contemplation. Once it 
has emerged, however, it takes up, to help it in the work, aspects 
of the conscious self. The surface must co-operate with the 
deeps, and at last merge with those deeps to produce 
that unification of consciousness upon high levels which 
alone can put a term to man’s unrest. The heart that 
longs for the All, the mind that conceives it, the will that 
concentrates the whole self upon it, must all be called into play. 
The self must be surrendered: but it must not be annihilated, 
as some Quietists have supposed. It only dies that it may live 
again. Supreme success, says the Lady Julian, in a passage 
which anticipates the classification of modern psychology, the 
permanent assurance of the mystic that “we are more verily in - 
heaven than in earth,” “cometh of the natural Love of our 
soul, and of the clear light of our Reason, and of the steadfast 
Mind.” ! 

But what is the order of precedence which these three 
activities are to assume in the work which is ove? All, as we 
have seen, must do their part; for the business is nothing less 
than the movement of man in his wholeness to high levels. But 
which shall predominate? On the answer which each gi: es to 
this question the ultimate nature of the self, and the aatue of 
that self’s experience of reality, will depend. The question for 
her is really this ; under which aspect of <uonsciousness can she 
creep most closely to the Thought of God; the real life in which 
she is bathed? Which, fostered and made dominant, is most 
likely to put her in harmony with the Absolute? The Love of 


* Julian of Norwich, ‘‘ Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. lv, 
G 


82 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


God, which is ever in the hearts and often on the lips of 

Saints, is the passionate desire for this harmony; the “malady 

of thought” is its intellectual equivalent. Though we may > 
seem to escape God, we cannot escape this craving ; except at 

the price of utter stagnation. We go back, therefore, to the 

statement with which this chapter opened: that of the two 

governing desires which share the prison of the self. We see 

them now as representing the cravings of the intellect and the 

emotions for the only end of all quests. The disciplined will— 

that “ conative power ”’—with all the dormant faculties which it 

can wake and utilize, can come to the assistance of one of 
them. Which? The question is a crucial one; for the destiny 

of the self depends on the partner which the will selects, 





CHAPTER IV 
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 


Mysticism and Magic—Distinction between them—The Way of Love and the Way 
of Knowledge—Characteristics of Mysticism—Difficulty of fixing them—The Mystic 
has obtained contact with the Absolute—He is a spiritual genius—All men have 
latent mystical feeling—Such feeling is the source of the arts—Mystic and Artist— 
Their likenesses and differences—Difficulties of mystical expression—Mysticism and 
music—Richard Rolle—Symbolic expression—Vision—An accident not an implicit or 


‘mysticism—A method of communication—Suggestive power of symbols—Four 


characteristics of true mysticism—It is (1) practical, (2) transcendental, (3) the mystic 
is a lover, (4) his object is union with the Absolute—Mysticism defined—First 
characteristic illustrated—St. John of the Cross—Theologia Germanica—Second 
characteristic illustrated—Tauler—Plotinus—Third characteristic illustrated— Mystic 
love—Rolle—A Kempis—Gertrude More—Fourth characteristic illustrated— 
Mechthild of Magdeburg—The Mystic Way—Unity of the mystical experience— 
A fifth characteristic : disinterestedness—Self-surrender—Pure love—Summary 


and fundamental attitudes towards the unseen; and 

through them has developed two methods of getting in 
touch with it. For the purpose of our present inquiry, I propose 
to call these methods the “way of magic” and the “way of 
mysticism.” Having said so much, one must at once add that 
although in their extreme forms these arts are sharply con- 
trasted with one another, their frontiers are far from being 
clearly defined: that, starting from the same point, they often 
confuse the inquirer by using the same language, instruments, 


| ee since the world began, man has had two distinct 


and methods. Hence it is that so much which is really magic 


is loosely and popularly described as mysticism. They repre- 


sent as a matter of fact the opposite poles of the same thing : 


the transcendental consciousness of humanity. Between them 
lie the great religions, which might be described under this 
metaphor as representing the ordinarily habitable regions of 


that consciousness. Hence, at one end of the scale, pure 


83 


od AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


mysticism “shades off” into religion—from some points of view 
seems to grow out of it. No deeply religious man is without a 
touch of mysticism ; and no mystic can be other than religious, 
in the psychological if not in the theological sense of the word. 
At the other end of the scale, as we shall see later on, religion, 
no less surely, shades off into magic. 

The fundamental difference between the two is this: magic 
wants to get, mysticism wants to give—immortal and antago- . 
nistic attitudes, which turn up under one disguise or another in 
every age of thought. Both magic and mysticism in their full 
development bring the whole mental machinery, conscious and 
subconscious, to bear on their undertaking: both claim that 
they produce in their initiates powers unknown to ordinary 
men. But the centre round which that machinery is grouped, 
the reasons of that undertaking, and the ends to which those 
powers are applied differ enormously. In mysticism the will is 
united with the emotions in an impassioned desire to transcend 
the sense-world in order that the self may be joined by love to 
the-one eternal and ultimate Object of love ; whose existence is 
intuitively perceived by that which we aed: to call the’ 6 soul, but 
now find it easier to refer to as the “Cosmic” or “ transcendental ‘ 
sense. This is the poetic and religious témperament acting upon 
the plane of reality. In magic, the will unites with the intellect 
in an impassioned desire for supersensible knowledge. This is 
the intellectual, ag ggressive, and scientific temperament trying to 
extend its field of consciousness, until it includes the super- 
sensual world: obviously the antithesis of mysticism, though 
often adopting its title and style. 

It will be our business later on to consider in more detail 
the characteristics and significance of magic. Now it is enough 
to say that we may class broadly as magical all forms of self- 
seeking transcendentalism. It matters little whether the appa- 
ratus which they use be the incantations of the old magicians, 
the congregational prayer for rain of orthodox Churchmen, or 
the consciously self-hypnotizing devices of “New Thought”: 
whether the end proposed be the evocation of an angel, the 
power of transcending circumstance, or the healing of disease. 
The object of the thing is always the same: the deliberate 
exaltation of the will, till it transcends its usual limitations | 
and obtains for the self or group of selves something which it 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 85 


or they did not previously possess. It is an individualistic and 
acquisitive science: in all its forms an activity of the intellect, 
seeking Reality for its own purposes, or for those of humanity 
at large. 

Mysticism, whose great name is too often given to these 
supersensual activities, is utterly different from this. It is 
non-individualistic. It implies, indeed, the abolition of in- 
dividuality ; of that hard separateness, that “I, Me, Mine” 
which makes of man a finite isolated thing. It_is essentially 
a movement of the heart, seeking to transcend “the limitations 
tides ‘standpoint and to surrender itself to ultimate 
Reality; | 2 ciakesbaiatel Sain, fe satisty no” transcendental 
instinct of love.” “By the. an heart, “ol course we. here m ‘mean. not 
merely “ the seat of the affections,” “the organ of tender emotion,” 
and the like: but rather the inmost sanctuary of personal being, 
the synthesis of its love and will, the very source of its energy 
and life. The mystic is “in love with the Absolute” not in any 
idle or sentimental manner, but in that deep and vital sense which 
presses forward at all costs and through all dangers towards 
union with the object beloved. Hence, where the practice of 
magic—like the practice of science—does not necessarily entail 
any passionate emotion, though of course it does and must 
entail interest of some kind, mysticism, like art, cannot exist 
without it. We must feel, and feel acutely, before we want to 
act.on this hard and heroic scale. > 

We at once see that these two “activities correspond to the 
two eternal passions of the self, the desire of love and the 
desire of knowledge: severally representing the hunger of 
heart and intellect for ultimate truth. ) 

The third attitude towards the supersensual world, that of 
transcendental philosophy, hardly comes within the scope 
of the present inquiry ; since it is purely academic where both 
magic and mysticism are practical, and in their methods strictly 
empirical. Such philosophy is often wrongly called mysticism 
because it tries to make maps of the countries which the mystic 
explores. Its performances are useful, as diagrams are useful, 
so long as they do not ape finality ; remembering that the only 
final thing is personal experience—the personal exploration of 
the exalted and truth-loving soul. 


867. AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 
] 


( What then do we really mean by mysticism? A word 
which is impartially applied to the performances of mediums 
and the ecstasies of the saints, to “menticulture” and sorcery, 
dreamy poetry and mediaeval art, to prayer and palmistry, the 
doctrinal excesses of Gnosticism, and the tepid speculations of 
the Cambridge Platonists—even, according to William James, 
to the higher branches of intoxication *—soon ceases to have 
any useful meaning. Its employment merely confuses the 
inexperienced student, who usually emerges from his struggle 
with the ever-increasing mass of theosophical and psychical 
literature possessed by a vague idea that every kind of super- 
sensual theory and practice is somehow “mystical.” Hence 
it is necessary, if possible, to fix its true characteristics: to 
restate the fact that{ Mysticism, in its pure form, is the science 
of ultimates, the science of union with the Absolute, and 
nothing else, and that the mystic is the person who attains to 
this union, not the person who talks about it. ) Not to know 
about, but to Be, is the mark of the real practitioner. 

The difficulty lies in determining the point at which super- 
sensual experience ceases to be merely a practical and interest- 
ing extension of sensual experience—an enlarging, so to speak, 
of the boundaries of existence—-and passes over into that 
boundless life where Subject and Object, desirous and desired, 
are one. No sharp line, but rather an infinite series of gradations 
separate the two states. Hence we must look carefully at all 
the pilgrims on the road; discover, if we can, the motive of their 
travels, the maps which they use, the luggage which they take, 
the end which they attain. 

Now we have said that(the end which the mystic sets before 
him on his pilgrimage is conscious union with a living Absolute) 
That Divine Dark, that Abyss of the Godhead, of which he 
sometimes speaks as the goal of his quest, is just ‘this Absolute, 
the Uncreated Light in which the Universe is bathed, and which 
—transcending, as it does, all human powers of expression—he 
can only describe to us as dark. But there is—must be— 
contact “in an intelligible where” between every individual self 
and this Supreme Self, this All. In the mystic this union is 
conscious, personal, and complete. More or less according to 


* See ‘ Varieties of Religious Experience,’’ p. 387, ‘‘ The Drunken Consciousness 
is a bit of the Mystic Consciousness.” 


4 
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 87 


his measure, he has touched the substantial Being of Deity, not 
merely its manifestation in life. This it is which distinguishes 
him from the best and most brilliant of other men, and makes 
his science, in Patmore’s words, “the science of self-evident 
Reality.” Gazing with him into that ultimate Abyss, that 
unsearchable ground whence the World of ‘Becoming comes 
forth “eternally generated in an eternal Now,” we may see only 
the icy darkness of perpetual negations: but he looks upon the 
face of Perfect Love. 

Just as genius in any of the arts is—humanly speaking—the 
final term of a power of which each individual possesses the 
rudiments, so mysticism. may-be.looked upon as the final term, 
the active expression, of a power latent inthe whole race :_the 
power, that is to say, of so perceiving transcendent. reality. 
Few peoglasnass through life without knowing what it is to be 
at least ed by this mystical feeling. He who falls in love 
with a woman and perceives—as the lover really does perceive 
—that the categorical term “girl” veils a wondrous and un- 
speakable reality: he who, falling in love with nature, sees the 
light that never was on sea or land—a vaguely pretty phrase to 
those who have not seen it, but a scientific statement to the 
rest—he who falls in love with invisible things, or as we say 
“undergoes conversion”: all these have truly known for an 
instant something of the secret of the world.t 


s¢, . . Ever and anon a trumpet sounds 
From the hid battlements of Eternity, 
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.” 


At such moments “Transcendental Feeling, welling up from 
another ‘ Part of the Soul’ whispers to Understanding and Sense 
that they are leaving out something. What? Nothing less than 
the secret plan of the Universe. And what is that secret plan? 
The other ‘Part of the Soul’ indeed comprehends it in silence 
as it is, but can explain it to the Understanding only in the 
symbolical language of the interpreter, Imagination—in Vision.” 2 

Here, in this spark or “part of the soul” is the fountain 


* Compare above, pp. 24, 26, 57. 
2 ]. A. Stewart, ‘‘The Myths of Plato,” p. 42. 


88 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


alike ot the creative imagination and the mystic life. Now 
and again something stings it into consciousness, and man is 
caught up to the spiritual level, catches a glimpse of the “ secret 
plan.” Then hints of a marvellous truth, a unity whose note is 
ineffable peace, shine in created things; awakening in the self a 
sentiment of love, adoration, and awe. Its life is enhanced, the 
barrier of personality is broken, man escapes the sense-world, 
ascends to the apex of his spirit, and enters for a brief period 
into the more extended life of the All. 

This intuition of the Real lying at the root of the visible 
world and sustaining its life, is present in a modified form in the 
arts: perhaps it were better to say, must be present if these 
arts are to justify themselves as heightened forms of experience: 
It is this which gives to them that peculiar vitality, that strange 
power of communicating a poignant emotion, half torment and 
half joy, which baffle their more rational inter il We 
know that the picture which is “like a photograph,” the building 
which is at once handsome and commodious, the novel which is 
a perfect transcript of life, fail to satisfy us. It is difficult to 
say why this should be so unless it were because these things 
have neglected their true business ; which was not to reproduce 
the illusions of ordinary men but to catch and translate for us 
something of that “secret plan,” that reality which the artistic 
consciousness is able, in a measure, to perceive. “ Painting 
as well as music and poetry exists and exults in immortal 
thoughts,” says Blake That “life-enhancing power” which 
has been recognized by modern critics as the supreme quality 
of good painting,? has its origin in this contact of the artistic 
mind with the archetypal—or, if you like, the transcendental— 
world: the underlying verity. of things. 

A living critic, in whom poetic genius has brought about the 
unusual alliance of intuition with scholarship, testifies to this 
same truth when he says of the ideals which governed early | 
Chinese painting, “In this theory every work of art is thought’ 
of as an incarnation of the genius of rhythm, manifesting the 
living spirit of things with a clearer beauty and intenser power 
than the gross impediments of complex matter allow to be 
transmitted to our senses in the visible world around us. A 






 «¢ Descriptive Catalogue.” 
2 See Rolleston, ‘‘ Parallel Paths,” 1908. 





THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 89 


picture is conceived as a sort of apparition trom a more real 
world of essential life.’’* 

That “more real world of essential life” is the world in which 
the “free soul” of the great mystic dwells; hovering like the 
six-winged seraph before the face of the Absolute.2 The artist 
too may cross its boundaries in his brief moments of creation: 


but he cannot stay. He comes back to us, bearing its tidings, 
with Dante’s cry upon his lips— 


**, . . Non eran da cid le proprie penne 
se non che la mia mente fu percossa 
da un fulgore, in che sua voglia venne.” 3 


The mystic may say—is indeed bound to say — with 


‘St. Bernard, “My secret to myself.” Try how he will, his 


stammering and awestruck reports can hardly be understood 
but by those who are already in the way. But the artist cannot 


‘act thus. On him has been laid the duty of expressing some- 





thing of that which he perceives. He is bound to tell his love. 
‘In his worship of Perfect Beauty faith must be balanced by 


works. By means of veils and symbols he must interpret his 


free vision, his glimpse of the burning bush, to other men. He 


is the mediator between his brethren and the divine, for art is 


‘the link between appearance and reality. 


But we do not call every one who has these partial and 
artistic intuitions of reality a mystic, any more than we call 
every one a musician who has learnt to play the piano. The 
true ‘ue mysticis. the _.person--in- -whom.such.powers transcend.the 
merely artistic and visionary stage, and are exalted to the point 


DCE e eclatas arcane wee 
Of genius: in whom thé —Transcenden tal consciousness can 


coral, consciousness, ‘and who has definitely” 

surrendered himse tothe embrace—of Reality. ~~ OS gai a A 
“As-artists stand ina peculiar relation to the phenomenal 

world, receiving rhythms and discovering truths and beauties 


* Laurence Binyon, ‘‘ Painting in the Far East,” p. 9. 
2 “The Mirror of Simple Souls,” f. 141 C. (B.M. Add. 37790). 
3 Par. xxxiii. 139. ‘‘ Not for this were my wings fitted: save only that my mind 


Was smitten by a lightning flash, wherein came to it its desire.” 


4In this connexion Godfernaux (Revue Phzlosophique, February, 1902) has 


‘a highly significant remark to the effect that romanticism represents the invasion 


of secular literature by mystic or He eS emotion. It is, he says, the secez/arzzalzon 
of the inner life. 


90 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


which are hidden from other men, so this true mystic stands in 
a peculiar relation to the transcendental world ; there expe- 
riencing the onslaught of what must remain for us unimaginable 
delights. His consciousness is transfigured in a particular way, 
he lives at different levels of experience from other people: and 
this of course meatis that he sees a different world, since the 
world as we know it is the product of specific scraps or aspects 
of reality acting upon a normal and untransfigured conscious- 
ness. Hence his mysticism is no isolated vision, no arbitrary 
climpse of reality, but a complete system of life—a Syutagma, 
to use Eucken’s expressive term. As other men are immersed 
in and react to natural or intellectual life, so the mystic is 
immersed in and reacts to spiritual life. He moves towards 
that utter identification with its interests which he calls “ Union 
with God.” He has been called a lonely soul. He might more 
properly be described as a lonely body : for his soul, peculiarly re- 
sponsive, sends out and receives communications upon every side> 
The earthly artist, because perception brings with it the im- 
perative longing for expression, tries to give us in colour, sound 
or words a hint of his ecstasy, his glimpse of truth. Only those 
who have tried, know how small a fraction of his vision he can, 
under the most favourable circumstance,’ contrive to represent. 
The mystic too tries very hard to tell an unwilling world the 
only secret. But in his case, the difficulties are enormously 
increased. First, there is the huge disparity between his un- 
speakable experience and the language which will most nearly 
approach it. Next, there is the great gulf fixed between his 
mind and the mind of the world. His audience must be be- 
witched as well as addressed, caught up to something of his 
state, before they can be made to understand. 
| Were he a musician, it is probable that he could give his 
message to other musicians in the terms of that art, far more 
accurately than language will ever allow him to do: for we 
must remember that there is no excuse but that of convenience 
for the pre-eminence amongst modes of expression which we 
accord to words. These correspond so well to the physical 
plane and its adventures, that we forget that they have but the 
faintest of relations with transcendental things. Even the 
artist, before he can make use of them, is bound to re-arrange 
them in accordance with the laws of rhythm: obeying uncon- 


nn a my 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 91 


-sciously the rule by which all arts “tend to approach the con- 
dition of music.” 

So too the mystic. Mysticism, the most romantic thing in 
the universe, from one point of view the art of arts, their source 
and also their end, finds naturally enough its closest correspon- 
dences in the most purely artistic and most deeply significant of 
all forms of expression. The mystery of music is seldom 
realized by those who so easily accept its gifts. Yet of all the 
arts music alone shares with great mystical literature the 
power of waking us to response to the life-movement of the 
universe: brings us—we know not how—news of its exultant 
passions and its incomparable peace. Beethoven heard the 
very voice of Reality, and little of it escaped when he translated 
it for our ears.? 

The mediaeval mind, more naturally mystical than ours, 
and therefore more sharply aware of the part which rhythmic 
harmony plays in the worlds of nature and of grace, gave to 
music a Cosmic importance, discerning its operation in many 
phenomena which we now attribute to that dismal figment, 
Law. .“ There are three kinds of music,” says Hugh of St. 
Victor, “the music of the worlds, the music of humanity, the 
music of instruments. Of the music of the worlds, one is of the 
elements, another of the planets, another of Time. Of that 
which is of the elements, one is of number, another of weights, 
another of measure. Of that which is of the planets, one is of 
place, another of motion, another of nature. Of that which is of 
Time, one is of the days and the vicissitudes of light and dark- 
ness; another of the months and the waxing and waning of the 
moon ; another of the years and the changes of spring, summer, 
autumn and winter. Of the music of humanity, one is of the 

body, another of the soul, another in the connexion that is 
between them.”2 Thus the life of the visible and invisible 
universe consists in a supernal fugue. 


* Since this passage was written M. Hebert’s brilliant monograph ‘* Le Divin” 
(1907) has come into my hands. I take from his pages two examples of the analogy 
between mystical and musical emotion. First that of Gay, who had ‘‘ the soul, the 
heart, and the head full of music, of another beauty than that which is formulated by 
sounds.” Next, that of Ruysbroeck, who, in a passage that might have been written 
by Keats, speaks of Contemplation and Love as ‘‘ two heavenly pipes” which, blown 
upon by the Holy Spirit, play ‘‘ ditties of no tone ” (of. czt., p. 29). 

* Hugh of St. Victor, ‘* Didascalicon de Studio Legendi.”’ 


é 


92 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


One contemplative at least, Richard Rolle of Hampole, “ the 
father of English mysticism,” was acutely aware of this music 
of the soul, discerning in its joyous periods a response to the 
measured harmonies of the spiritual universe. In that beautiful 
description of his inward experience which is one of the jewels 
of mystical literature, nothing is more remarkable than his con- 
stant and deliberate employment of musical imagery. This 
alone, it seems, could catch and translate for him the wild 
rapture of Transcendent Life. The condition of joyous and 
awakened love to which the mystic passes when his purification 
is at an end, is to him, above all else, the state of Song. He 
does not “see” Reality: he “hears” it. For him, as for St. 
Francis of Assisi, it is a “heavenly melody, intolerably sweet.” * 

“Song I call,” he says, “when in a plenteous soul the sweet- 
ness of eternal love with burning is taken, and thought into 
song is turned, and the mind into full sweet sound is changed.” 2 
He who experiences this joyous exaltation “says not his 
prayers like other righteous men” but “is taken into mar- 
vellous mirth: and, goodly sound being descended into him, as 
it were with notes his prayers he sings.”3 So Gertrude More— 
“QO lett me sitt alone, silent to all the world and it to me, 
that I may learn the song of Love.” 4 

Rolle’s own experience of mystic joy seems actually to have 
come to him in this form: the perceptions of his exalted con- 
sciousness presenting themselves to his understanding under 
musical conditions, as other mystics have received them in the 
form of pictures or words. I give in his own words the charming 
account of his passage from the first state of “burning love” to 
the second state of “songful love”—from Calor to Canor— 
when “into song of joy meditation is turned.” “In the night, 
before supper, as I my psalms sung, as it were the sound of 
readers or rather singers about me I beheld. Whilst also, 
praying to heaven, with all desire I took heed, suddenly, in what 


t ¢¢Fioretti.’? Delle Istimati. (Arnold’s translation.) 

? Richard Rolle, ‘‘The Fire of Love ” (Early English Text Society), bk. i. 
cap. xv. As the Latin version of the ‘‘Incendium Amoris” unfortunately still 
remains in MS., in this and subsequent quotations from Rolle I have adopted Misyn’s 
fifteenth - century translation, slightly modernizing the spelling, and sometimes 
correcting from the Latin his somewhat obscure language. 

3 Op. cit., bk. i. cap. xxiii, Compare bk. ii. caps. v. and vi. 

4 ‘Spiritual Exercises,” p. 30. } 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 93 


manner I wot not, in me the sound of song I felt; and likeliest 
heavenly melody I took, with me dwelling in mind. Forsooth 
my thought continually to mirth of song was changed: and as 
it were the same that loving I had thought, and in prayers and 
psalms had said, in soumd I showed.” ! 

The song, however, is a mystic melody having little in 
common with its clumsy image, earthly music. Bodily song 
“lets it”; and “noise of janglers makes it turn again to | 
thought,” “for sweet ghostly song accords not with outward 
song, the which in churches and elsewhere is used. It discords 
much: for all that is man’s voice is formed with bodily ears to 
be heard ; but among angels tunes it has an acceptable melody, 
and with marvel it is commended of them that have known 
it.’ To others it is incommunicable. ‘“ Worldly lovers soothly 
words or ditties of our song may know, for the words they 
read: but the tone and sweetness of that song they may not 
learn.” 2 

Such symbolism as this—a living symbolism of experience 
and action as well as of statement—seems almost essential to 
mystical expression. The mind must employ some device of 
the kind if its transcendental perceptions—wholly unrelated as 
they are to the phenomena with which intellect is able to deal— 
are ever to be grasped by the surface consciousness. Some- 
times the symbol and the perception which it represents become 
fused in that consciousness ; and the mystic’s experience then 
_ presents itself to him as “visions” or “voices” which we must 
look upon as the garment he has himself provided to veil that 
Reality upon which no man may look and live. The nature of 
this garment will be largely conditioned by his temperament—as 
in Rolle’s evident bias towards music, St. Catherine of Genoa’s 
leaning towards the abstract conceptions of fire and light—and | 
also by his theological education and environment; as in the 
highly dogmatic visions and auditions of St. Gertrude, Suso, St. 
Catherine of Siena, the Blessed Angela of Foligno; above all 


* Op. cit., bk. i. cap. xvi. 
2 Op. ctt., bk. ii. caps. iii, and xii. Shelley is of the same opinion :— 


‘‘ The world can hear not the sweet notes that move 
The Sphere whose light is melody to lovers.” 
(** The Triumph of Life.”’) 


94 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of St. Teresa, whose marvellous self-analyses provide the classic 
account of these attempts of the mind to translate transcen- 
dental intuitions into concepts with which it can deal. 

The greatest mystics, however—Ruysbroeck, St. John of the 
Cross, and St. Teresa herself in her later stages—distinguish 
clearly between the indicible Reality which they perceive and 
the image under which they describe it. Again and again they 
tell us with Dionysius and Eckhart, that the Object of their 
contemplation “hath no image”: or with St. John of the Cross 
that “the soul can never attain to the height of the divine union, 
so far as it is possible in this life, through the medium of any 
forms or figures.” Therefore the attempt which has sometimes 
been made to identify mysticism with such forms and figures— 
with visions, voices, and “supernatural favours” —is clearly 

wrong. 
; “The highest and most divine things which it is given us to 
see and to know,” says Dionysius the Areopagite plainly, “are 


in some way the expression of all That which the sovereign © 


Nature of God includes: an expression which reveals to us 


That which escapes all thought and which has its seat beyond 


the heights of heaven.”2 
The mystic, as a rule, cannot wholly do without symbol and 


image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: 


for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communi- 


cated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some side-long - 


way, some hint or parallel which will stimulate the dormant 
intuition of the reader, and convey, as all poetic language does, 
something beyond its surface sense. Hence the enormous part 
which is played in all mystical writings by symbolism and 
imagery; and also by that rhythmic and exalted language 
which induces in sensitive persons something of the languid 
ecstasy of dream. ‘The close connection between rhythm 
and heightened states of consciousness is as yet little 
understood. Its further investigation will probably throw 
much light on ontological as well as psychological problems. 
Mystical, no less than musical and poetic perception, tends 
naturally—we know not why—to present itself in rhythmical 


* «Subida del Monte Carmelo,” |. ii. cap. xvi. (Here and throughout I quote 


from Lewis's translation.) 
2 * De Mystica Theologia,” i. 3. 


See PPA Se 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 95 


periods: a feature which is also strongly marked in writings 
obtained in the automatic state. So constant is this law in 
some subjects that Baron von Hiigel, in his biography of St. 
Catherine of Genoa, has adopted the presence or absence of 
rhythm as a test whereby to distinguish the genuine utterances 
of the saint from those wrongly attributed to her by successive 
editors of her legend. 

All kinds of symbolic language come naturally to the 
articulate mystic, who is usually a literary artist as well: so 
naturally, that he sometimes forgets to explain that his utter- 
ance is but symbolic; a desperate attempt to translate the 
truth of that world into the beauty of this. It is here that 
mysticism joins hands with music and poetry: had this fact 
always been recognized by its critics, they would have been 
saved from many regrettable and some ludicrous misconceptions. 
Symbol—the clothing which the spiritual borrows from the 
material plane—is a form of artistic expression. That is to 
say, it is not literal but suggestive: though the artist who uses 
it may sometimes lose sight of this distinction. Hence the 
persons who imagine that the “Spiritual Marriage” of St. 
Catherine or St. Teresa veils a perverted sexuality, that the 
vision of the Sacred Heart involved an incredible anatomical 
experience, or that the divine inebriation of the Siifis is the 
apotheosis of drunkenness, do but advertise their ignorance of 
the mechanism of the arts: like the lady who thought that 
Blake must be mad because he said that he had touched the 
sky with his finger. 

Further(¢he study of the mystics, the keeping company how- 
ever humbly with their minds, brings with it as music or poetry 
does—but in a far greater degree—a strange exhilaration, as if 
we were brought near to some mighty source of Being, were at 
last on the verge of the secret which all seek) The symbols 
displayed, the actual words employed, when we analyse them, 
are not enough to account for such effect. It is rather that 
these messages from the waking transcendental self of another, 
stir our own deeper selves in their sleep. It were hardly an 
extravagance to say, that those writings which are the outcome 
of true and first-hand mystical experience may be known by 
this power of imparting to the reader the sense of exalted and 


* Von Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element in Religion,” vol. i. p. 189. 


96) AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


extended life. “ All mystics,” says Saint-Martin, “speak the 
same language, for they come from the same country.” The 
deep undying life which nests within us came from that country 
too: and it recognizes the accents of home, though it cannot 
always understand what they would say. 


Now, returning to our original undertaking, that of defining 


- if we can the characteristics of true mysticism, I think that 
- we have already reached a point at which William James’s cele- 
brated “four marks” of the mystic state,t Ineffability, Noetic 
Quality, Transiency, and Passivity, will fail to satisfy us. In 
their place I propose to set out, illustrate and, I hope, justify 
four other rules or notes which may be applied as tests to any 


__.. given case which claims to take rank amongst the mystics. 


1. True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and 
theoretical. It is an organic life-process, a something which 
the whole self does; not something as to which its intellect 
holds an opinion. 

2. Its aims are wholly transcendental and spiritual. It is 
in no way concerned with adding to, exploring, re-arranging, 
or improving anything in the visible universe. The mystic 
brushes aside that universe even in its most supernormal mani- 
festations. Though he does not, as his enemies declare, neglect 
his duty to the many, his heart is always set upon the change- 
less One. 

3. This One is for the mystic, not merely the Reality of all 
that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love; never 
an object of exploration. It draws his whole being homeward, 
but always under the guidance of the heart. 

} 4. Living union with this One—which is the term of his 

adventure—is a definite state or form of enhanced life. It is 
obtained neither from an intellectual realization of its delights, 
nor from the most acute emotional longings. Though these 
must be present, they are not enough. It is arrived at by a 
definite and arduous psychological process—the so-called Mystic 
Way—entailing the complete remaking of character and the 
liberation of a new, or rather latent, form of consciousness, 
which imposes on the self the condition which is sometimes 
inaccurately called “ecstasy,” but is better named the Unitive 
State. 


* “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 380, 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM — 97 


Mysticism, then, is not an opinion: it is not a philosophy. 
It has nothing in common with the pursuit of occult know- 
ledge. It is not merely the power of contemplating Eternity. 
It is the name of that organic process which involves the perfect 
consummation of the Love of God: the achievement here and 
now of the immortal heritage of man. Or, if you like it better 
—for this means exactly the same thing—it is the art of 
establishing his conscious relation with the Absolute. 

The movement of mystic consciousness towards this con- 
summation, is not merely the sudden admission to an over- 
whelming vision of Truth: it is rather an ordered movement 
towards ever higher levels of reality, ever closer identification 
with the Infinite. “The mystic experience,” says Récéjac, 
“ends with the words, ‘I live, yet not I, but God in me.’ This 
feeling of identification, which is the term of mystical activity, 
has a very important significance. In its early stages the 
mystic consciousness feels the Absolute in opposition to the 
Self... as mystic activity goes on, it tends to abolish this 
opposition. . . . When it has reached its term the consciousness 
finds itself possessed by the sense of a Being at one and the | 
same time greater than the Self and identical with it: great 
enough to be God, intimate enough to be me.” ! 

This is the mystic union which is the only possible fulfil- 
ment of mystic love: since 


‘* All that is not One must ever 
Suffer with the wound of Absence, 
And whoever in Love’s city 
Enters, finds but room for One 
And but in One-ness, Union.’’? 


The history of mysticism is the history of the demonstration 
of this law upon the plane of reality. 

Now, how do these statements square with the practice of 
the great mystics ; and with the various forms of activity which 
have been classified at one time or another as mystical ? 

(1) Mysticism ts practical, not theoretical. 

This statement taken alone is not of course enough to 
identify mysticism, since it is equally true of magic, which also 


* “ Les Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 45- 
2 Jami. Quoted in ‘‘ Jelalu ’d Din” (Wisdom of the East Series), p. 25. 
H 


"?* 


98 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


proposes to itself something to be done rather than something 
to be believed. It at once comes into collision, however, with 
the opinions of the group of writers who believe mysticism to 
be “the reaction of the born Platonist upon religion.” 

The difference between such devout philosophers and 
the true mystic, is the difference which the late Father 
Tyrrell defined as separating theology from revelation.t 
Mysticism, like revelation, is final and personal. It is 
not merely a beautiful and suggestive diagram of experience, 
but is of the very stuff of life. In the superb words of 
Plotinus, it is the soul’s solitary adventure: “the flight of 
the Alone to the Alone.’2 Its vision provides the material, 
the substance, the actual experience, upon which mystical 
philosophy cogitates; as the theologians cogitate upon the 
individual revelations which form the basis of faith. Hence 
those whom we are to accept as mystics must have received, 
and acted upon, intuitions of a Truth which is for them absolute. 
If we are to acknowledge that they “knew the doctrine” 
they must have “lived the life,’ submitted to the interior 
travail of the Mystic Way, not merely have reasoned about 
the mystical experiences of others. We could not well 
dispense with our Christian Platonists and mystical philoso- 
phers. They are our stepping stones to higher things; 
interpret to our dull minds, entangled in the’ sense-world, 
the ardent vision of those who speak to us from the dimension 
of Reality. But they are no more mystics than the mile- 
stones on the Dover Road are travellers to Calais. Some- 
times their words—the wistful words of those who know but 
cannot be—produce mystics; as the sudden sight of a sign- 
post pointing to the sea will rouse the spirit of adventure 
in a boy. Also there are many instances of true mystics, 
such as Eckhart, who have philosophized upon their own 
. experiences, greatly to the advantage of the world ; and others 
—Plotinus is the most characteristic example—of Platonic 
philosophers who have passed far beyond the limits of their 
own philosophy, and abandoned the making of diagrams for 
an experience, however imperfect, of the reality at which 
these diagrams hint. It were more accurate to reverse the 


t «* Through Scylla and Charybdis,” p. 264. 
2 Ennead vi. 9. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 99 


epigram above stated, and say, that Platonism is the re- 
action of the born intellectualist upon mystical truth. 

‘Over and over again the great mystics tell us, not how 
they speculated, but how they acted. To them, the passage 
from the life of sense to the life of spirit is a veritable under-_ 
taking, which demands effort and constancy. The paradoxical 
_‘*quiet” of the contemplative is but the outward stillness 
essential to inward work. Their favourite symbols are those 
of action: battle, search, and pilgrimage. 


‘In an obscure night 
Fevered with love’s anxiety — 
(O hapless, happy plight !) 
I wet, none seeing me, 
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be,” #? 


said St. John of the Cross, in his poem of the mystic quest. 

“It became evident to me,’ says Al Ghazzali of his 
own search for mystic truth, “that the Stfis are men of 
intuition and not men of words. I recognized that I had 
learnt all that can be learnt of Sifiism by study, and that 
the rest could not be learnt by study or by speech.”2 “Let 
no one suppose,” says the “ Theologia Germanica,” “that we 
may attain to this true light and perfect knowledge ... by 
hearsay, or by reading and study, nor yet by high skill and 
great learning.”.3 “It is not enough,” says Gerlac Petersen, 
“to know by estimation merely: but we must know by 
experience,” 4 

So Mechthild of Magdeburg says of her revelations, “ The 
writing of this book was seen, heard, and experienced in 
every limb... . I see it with the eyes of my soul, and hear 
it with the ears of my eternal spirit.” 5 

“The invitation of the mystic life is to come and see, the 
promise of the mystic life is that we shall attain to see.” 6 
Those who suppose it to be merely a pleasing consciousness 


* “fn una Noche Escura,” Stanza I. I quote from Mr. Arthur Symons’s 
beautiful translation, which will be found in vol. ii. of his Collected Poems. 

? Schmdlders, ‘‘ Les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes,” p. 55+ 

3 Cap. xix. : 

4 * Tonitum cum Deo Soliloquium,”’ cap. xi. 

5 ** Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt. iv. cap. 13. 

6 A. E. Waite, ‘Studies in Mysticism,” p. 53. 


100 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of the Divine in the world, a sense of the “otherness” of 
things, a basking in the beams of the Uncreated Light, are 
only playing with Reality. True mystical achievement is the 
most complete and most difficult expression of life which is 
as yet possible to man. It is at once an act of love, an 
act of union, and an act of supreme perception; a trinity of 
experiences which meets and satisfies the three activities of 
the self. Religion might give us the first and metaphysics 
the third of these processes. Only Mysticism can offer the 
middle term of the series; the essential link which binds the 
three in one. “Secrets,” says St. Catherine of Siena, “ are 
revealed to a friend who has become one thing with his friend 
and not to a servant.” ! 

(2) Mystectsm ts an entirely Spiritual Activity. 

This rule provides us with a further limitation, which of 
course excludes all the practisers of magic and of magical 
religion: even in their most exalted and least materialistic 
forms. As we shall see when we come to consider these 
persons, their object—not necessarily an illegitimate one—is to 
improve and elucidate the visible by help of the invisible: to 
use the supernormal powers of the self for the increase of 
power, virtue, happiness or knowledge. The mystic never turns — 
back on himself in this way, or tries to combine the advant- 
ages of two worlds. At the term of his development he knows — 
God by communion, and this direct intuition of the Absolute — 
kills all lesser cravings. He possesses God, and needs nothing © 
more. Though he will spend himself ceaselessly and tirelessly 
for other men, become “an agent of the Eternal Goodness,” 
he is destitute of supersensual ambitions, craves no occult 
knowledge or power. Having his eyes set on eternity, his 
consciousness steeped in it, he can well afford to tolerate the 
entanglements of time. “His spirit,” says Tauler, “is as it 
were sunk and lost in the Abyss of the Deity, and loses the — 
consciousness of all creature-distinctions. All things are 
gathered together in one with the divine sweetness, and the 
man’s being is so penetrated with the divine substance that 
he loses himself therein, as a drop of water is lost in a cask 
of strong wine. And thus the man’s spirit is so sunk in God © 
in divine union, that he loses all sense of distinction ,.. and 

* Dialogo, cap. lx. 4 


i 


r 
: 


os . , 
= : 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 101 


there remains a secret, still union, without cloud or colour.”! 
“I wish not,” said St. Catherine of Genoa, “for anything that 
comes forth from Thee, but only for Thee, oh sweetest Love!” 2 
“The Soul,’ says Plotinus in one of his most profound 
passages, “having now arrived at the desired end, and _ par- 
ticipating of Deity, will know that the Supplier of true life 
is then present. She will likewise then require nothing farther ; 
for, on the contrary it will be requisite to lay aside other 
things, to stop in this alone, amputating everything else with 
which she is surrounded.” 3 

(3) The business and method of Mysticism ts Love. 

Here is one of the most distinctive notes of true mysticism ; 
a note which marks it off from every other kind of tran- 
scendental theory and practice, and provides the answer to the 
question with which our last chapter closed. It is the eager, 
outgoing activity whose driving power is generous love, not the 
absorbent, indrawing activity which strives only for new know- 
ledge, that is fruitful in the spiritual as well as in the physical 
world. 

Having said this, however, we must add—as we did when 
speaking of the “heart ’"—that the word Love as applied to the 
mystics is to be understood in its deepest, fullest sense; as the 
ultimate expression of the self’s most vital tendencies, not as 
the superficial affection or emotion often dignified by this name. 
Mystic Love is the offspring of the Celestial Venus; the deep- 
seated desire and tendency of the soul towards its source.4 It 
is a condition of humble access, a life-movement of the self: 
more direct in its methods, more valid in its results,—even in the 
hands of the least lettered of its adepts—than the most piercing 
intellectual vision of the greatest philosophic mind. Over and 
over again the mystics insist upon this. “ For silence is not 
God, nor speaking is not God ; fasting is not God nor eating is 
not God ; onliness is not God nor company is not God; nor 
yet any of all the other two such quantities. He is hid between 
them, and may not be found by any work of thy soul, but all 
only by love of thine heart. He may not be known by reason, 
He may not be gotten by thought, nor concluded by under- 


* Tauler, Sermon or Septuagesima Sunday (Winkworth’s translation, p. 253). 
? Vita e Dottrina, cap. vi. 3 Ennead vi. 9. 
4 Plotinus, /oc. czt. 


102 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


standing ; but he may be loved and chosen with the true lovely 
will of thine heart. . . . Such a blind shot with the sharp dart 
of longing love may never fail of the prick, the which is 
God.” = 

“Come down quickly,” says the Incomprehensible Godhead 
to the soul that has struggled like Zacchzus to the topmost 
branches of the theological tree, “for I would dwell with you 
to-day. And this swift descent which God demands is simply 
an immersion by love and desire in that abyss of the God- 


head which the intellect cannot understand. Here, where — 


the intelligence must rest without, love and desire can 
enter in.” 2 


One might compile volumes of extracts from the works of — 
the mystics illustrative of this rule, which is indeed its central — 
principle ; for “ Love,” says Rolle, “truly suffers not a loving 
soul to bide in itself, but ravishes it out to the Lover, that the — 
soul is more there where it loves, than where the body is that © 


lives and feels it.” “Oh singular joy of love everlasting,” he 
says again, “that ravishes all his to heavens above all worlds, 
them binding with bands of virtue! Oh dear charity, in earth 
that has thee not is nought wrought, whatever it hath! He 
truly in thee that is busy, to joy above earthly is soon lifted! 


... Oh merry love, strong, ravishing, burning, wilful, strong, © 


unslaked, that all my soul brings to thy service, and suffers to 
think on nothing but thee. .. . Oh clear charity, come into me 


a, 


ik 


and take me into thee, and so present me before my Maker. © 
Thou art a savour well tasting, sweetness well smelling, a ~ 
pleasing odour, a cleansing heat, a comfort endlessly lasting, 
Thou makest men contemplative, heaven-gate thou openest, — 
mouths of accusers thou dost shut, God thou makest to be seen — 


and multitude of sins thou hidest. We praise thee, we preach ~ 


- 


thee, by thee the world we quickly overcome, by whom we joy : 


and the heavenly ladder we ascend.” 3 


Love to the mystic, then, is (@) the active, conative expres- 
sion of his will and desire for the Absolute, (4) his innate 


t “ An Epistle of Discretion.” This beautiful old English tract, probably by the — 
author of the ‘‘ Cloud of Unknowing,” is printed by E. Gardner, ‘‘ The Cell of Self 


Knowledge,” p. 108. 
* Ruysbroeck, ‘* L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. i. cap. xxvi. 
3 “ The Mending of Life,” cap. xi. 





THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 103 


tendency to that Absolute: his spiritual weight. He is only 
thoroughly natural, thoroughly alive, when he is obeying 
its voice. For him it is the source of joy: the secret of the 
universe: the vivifying principle of things. In the words of 
Récéjac, “ Mysticism claims to be able to know the Unknowable 
without any help from dialectics; and believes that, by the way 
of love and will, it reaches a point to which thought alone is 
unable to attain.” Again, “It is the heart and never the reason 
which leads us to the Absolute.”! Hence in St. Catherine of 
Siena’s exquisite allegory it is the feet of the soul’s affection 
which brings it first to the Bridge, “for the feet carry the body 
as affection carries the soul.” 2 

Page after page of the jewels of mystical literature glow 
with this intimate and impassioned love of the Absolute ; which 
transcends the dogmatic language in which it is clothed and 
become applicable to mystics of every race and creed. There 
is little difference in this between the extremes of Eastern and 
Western thought: between A Kempis the Christian and 
Jelalu ’d Din the Moslem saint. 

“How great a thing is Love, great above all other goods: 
for alone it makes all that is heavy light, and bears evenly all 
that is uneven.... 

“ Love would be aloft, nor will it be kept back by any lower 
thing. Love would be free,.and estranged from all worldly 
affection, that its inward sight be not hindered: that it may not 
be entangled by any temporal comfort, nor succumb to any 
tribulation. 

“Nought is sweeter than love, nought stronger, nought 
higher, nought wider: there is no more joyous, fuller, better 
thing in heaven or earth. For love is born of God, and cannot 
rest save in God, above all created things. 

“ The lover flies, runs, and rejoices: he is free, and cannot be 
restrained. He gives all for all, and has all in all; for he rests 
in One Supreme above all, from whom all good flows and 
proceeds. 

“He looks not at the gift, but above all goods turns himself 
to the giver. 

“, .. He who loves knows the cry of this voice. For this 


™ «© Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 7. 
? Dialogo, cap. xxvi. 


104 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


burning affection of the soul is a loud cry in the ears of God 
when it saith ‘My God, My Love, Thou art all mine, and I am 
all Thine.’ ” # 

So much for the Christian. Now for the Persian mystic, 


‘While the thought of the Beloved fills our hearts 
All our work is to do Him service and spend life for Him. 
Wherever He kindles His destructive torch, 
Myriads of lovers’ souls are burnt therewith. 
The lovers who dwell within the sanctuary 
Are moths burnt with the torch of the Beloved’s face, 
O heart, hasten thither! for God will shine upon you, 
And seem to you a sweet garden instead of a terror. 
He will infuse into your soul a new soul, 
So as to fill you, like a goblet, with wine. 
Take up your abode in His Soul ! 
Take up your abode in heaven, oh bright full moon! 
Like the heavenly Scribe, He will open your heart's book, 
That he may reveal mysteries unto you.’’? 


Well might Hilton say that ‘Perfect love maketh God 
and the soul to be as if they both together were but one 
thing,’3 and Tauler that “the well of life is love, and he who 
dwelleth not in love is dead.” 4 

“When I love God with my will, I transform myself into 
Him,” says St. Bernard, “for this is the power or virtue ot 
love, that it maketh thee to be like unto that which thou 
lovest.” 5 

These, nevertheless, are objective and didactic utterances ; 
though their substance may be—probably is—personal, their 
form is not. But if we want to see what it really means to be 
“in love with the Absolute,’—how intensely actual to the 
mystic is the Object of his passion, how far removed from the 
_ sphere of pious duty, or of philosophic speculation, how concrete, 
positive and dominant such a passion may be—we must study 
the literature of autobiography, not that of poetry or exhorta- 
tion. I choose for this purpose, rather than the well-known self- 
analyses of St. Augustine, St. Teresa or Suso, which are acces- 

* ‘De Imitatione Christi,” 1. ii. cap. v. 
2 Jalalu ’d Din (Wisdom of the East Series), p. 79. 
3 ‘* The Scale of Perfection,” p. 339. 


4 Sermon for Thursday in Easter Week (Winkworth’s translation, p. 294). 
5 Quoted in the ‘‘ Soliloquies of St. Bonaventura,” ex. 1. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 105 


sible to every one, the more private confessions of that remark- 
able and neglected mystic Dame Gertrude More, contained in 
her “Spiritual Exercises.” 

This nun, great-great-granddaughter of Sir Thomas More, 
and favourite pupil of the celebrated Benedictine contemplative, 
the Ven. Augustine Baker, exhibits the romantic and personal 


side of mysticism far more perfectly than even St. Teresa, whose 
works were composed for her daughters’ edification. She was 


an eager student of St. Augustine, “my deere deere Saint,” as 
she calls him more than once. He has evidently influenced her 
language ; but her passion is her own. 

Remember that Gertrude More’s confessions represent the 
most secret conversations of her soul with God. They were not 
meant for publication ; but, written for the most part on blank 
leaves in her breviary, were discovered and published after 
her death. “She called them,” says the title-page with touching 
simplicity, “Asor ordinem nescet: an Ideot’s Devotions. Her 
only spiritual father and directour, Father Baker, styled them 
Confessiones Amanitzs, A Lover’s Confessions. Asmans Deum 
anima sub Deo despicit untversa. A soul that loveth God 
despiseth all things that be inferiour unto God.”! 

The spirit of her little book is summed up in two epigrams : 
epigrams of which her contemporary, Crashaw, might have been 
proud. “To give all for love, is a most sweet bargain.”2 “O 
let me love, or not live!”3—surely a nobler concept of the 
devoirs of spiritual chivalry than St. Teresa’s more celebrated 
and uncompromising alternative: Aut patc aut mort. Love 
indeed was her life: and she writes of it with a rapture which 
recalls at one moment St. Francis de Sales, at another the love 
songs of the Elizabethan poets. 

“ Never was there or can there be imagined such a Love, as is 
between an humble soul and thee. Who can express what 
passeth between such a soul and thee? Verily neither man nor 
Angell is able to do it sufficiently. . . . In thy prayse I am only 
_ happy, in which, my Joy, I will exullt with all that love thee. 
For what can be a comfort while I live separated from thee, but 
only to remember that my God, who is more myne than I am 


* They were printed in 1658, ‘‘ At Paris by Lewis de la Fosse in the Carme 
Street at the Signe of the Looking Glasse.’’ I quote from this edition. 
Ss 13 3 P, 181. 


106 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


my owne, is absolutely and infinitely happy? ... Out of this 
true love between a soul and thee, there ariseth such a know- 
ledge in the soul that it loatheth all that is an impediment to 
her further proceeding in the Love of thee. O Love, Love, even 
by naming thee, my soul loseth itself in thee. . . . Nothing can 
Satiate a reasonable soul, but only thou: and having of thee, 
who art indeed all, nothing could be said to be wanting to her. 
... Blessed are the cleane of hart for they shall see God. O sight 
to be wished, desired, and longed for; because once to have 
seen thee is to have learnt all things. Nothing can bring us 
to this sight but love. But what love must it be? not a sensible 
love only, a childish love, a love which seeketh itself more than 
the beloved. No, no, but it must be an ardent love, a pure love, 
a couradgious love, a love of charity, an humble love, and a 
constant love, not worn out with labours, not daunted with any 
difficulties. . . . For that soul that hath set her whole love and 
desire on thee, can never find any true satisfaction, but only in 
thee.” ! 

Who will not see that we have here no literary exercise, but 
the fruits of an experience of peculiar intensity? It answers 
exactly to one of the best modern definitions of mysticism as 
“in essence, the concentration of all the forces of the soul upon 
a supernatural Object, conceived and loved as a living Person.’ 
“Love and desire,” says the same critic, “are the fundamental 
necessities ; and where they are absent man, even though he be 
a visionary, cannot be called a mystic.”3 Such a definition, of 
course, is not complete. It is valuable however because it 
emphasizes the fact that all true mysticism is rooted in per- 

sonality ; and is therefore fundamentally a science of the heart. 
| “ The passion which constrains the stars ” also constrains that — 
starry thing, the soul. Attraction, desire, and uniom as the 
fulfilment of desire, this is the way Life works, in the highest as 
in the lowest things. The mystic’s outlook, indeed, is the lover's 
outlook. It has the same element of wildness, the same quality 
of selfless and quixotic devotion, the same combination of 
rapture and humility. This parallel is more than a pretty fancy: 
for mystic and lover, upon different planes, are alike responding 
to the call of the Spirit of Life. The language of human 


2 Of. cit., pp- 9, 16, 25, 35, 138, 175. 
? Berger, ‘* William Blake,”’ p. 72. 3 Tbid., p. 74. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 107 


passion is tepid and insignificant beside the language in which 
the mystics try to tell the splendours of their love. They force 
upon the unprejudiced reader the conviction that they are dealing 
with an ardour far more burning for an Object far more real. 

“This monk can give lessons to lovers!” exclaimed Arthur 
Symons in astonishment of St. John of the Cross.t It would be 
strange if he could not; since their finite passions are but the 
feeble images of his infinite one, their beloved the imperfect. 
symbol of his First and only Fair. “I saw Him and sought 
Him: I had Him and I wanted Him,” says Julian of Norwich, 
in a phrase which seems to sum up all the ecstasy and longing 
of man’s soul. Only this mystic passion can lead us from our 
prison. Its brother, the desire of knowledge, may enlarge and 
improve the premises to an extent as yet undreamed of: but it 
can never unlock the doors. 

(4) Mysticism entazls a definite Psychological Experience. 

That is to say, it shows itself not merely as an attitude of 
mind and heart, but as a form of organic life. It is not a theory 
of the intellect or a hunger, however passionate, of the heart: 
but a definite and peculiar development of the whole self, con- 
scious and unconscious, under the spur of such a hunger: a 
remaking of the whole character on high levels in the interests 
of the transcendental life. The mystics are emphatic in their 
statement that spiritual desires are useless unless they involve 
the movement of the whole self towards the Real. 

Thus in the visions of Mechthild of Magdeburg, “ The soul 
spake thus to her Desire, ‘ Fare forth and see where my Love is. 
Say to him that I desire to love.’ So Desire sped forth, for she 
is quick of her nature, and came to the Empyrean and cried, 

Great Lord, open and let me in!’ Then said the House- 
holder of that place: ‘What means this fiery eagerness?’ 
Desire replied, ‘Lord, I would have thee know that my lady 
can no longer bear to live. If Thou wouldst flow forth to her, 
then might she swim: but the fish cannot long exist that is left 
stranded on the shore.’ ‘Go back,’ said the Lord, ‘I will not 
let thee in unless thou bring to me that hungry soul, for it is in 
this alone that I take delight.’ ” 2 

We have said3 that the full mystic consciousness is extended 


* Contemporary Review, April, 199. 
? “ Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt. iii. cap. 1. 3 Supra, p. 42. 


108 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


in two distinct directions. So too there are two distinct sides to 
the full mystical experience. (A) The vision or consciousness 
of Absolute Perfection. (B) The inward transmutation to 
which that Vision compels the mystic, in order that he may be 
to some extent worthy of that which he has beheld: may take 
his place within the order of Reality. He has seen the Perfect ; 
he wants to be perfect too. The “third term,” the necessary 
bridge between the Absolute and the Self, can only, he feels, be 
moral and spiritual transcendence—in a word, Sanctzty—for “the 
only means of attaining the Absolute lies in adapting ourselves 
to It.”* The moral virtues are for him, then, the obligatory 
“ornaments of the Spiritual Marriage” as Ruysbroeck called 
them : though far more than their presence is needed to bring 
that marriage about. Unless this impulse for moral perfection 
be born in him, this travail of the inner life begun, he is no 
mystic: though he may well be a visionary, a prophet, a 
“mystical” poet. 

Moreover, this process of transmutation, this rebuilding of 
the self on higher levels, will involve the establishment within 
the field of consciousness, the making “central for life,” of those 
subconscious spiritual perceptions which are the primary 
material of mystical experience. The end and object of this 
“inward alchemy” will be the raising of the whole self to the 
condition in which conscious and permanent union with the 
Absolute takes place; and man, ascending to the summit of his 
manhood, enters into that greater life for which he was made. 

In its journey towards this union, the subject passes through 
certain well-marked phases, which constitute what is known as 
the “Mystic Way.” This statement rules out from the true 
mystic kingdom all merely sentimental and affective piety and 
visionary poetry, no less than mystical philosophy. It brings 
us back to our first proposition—the concrete and practical 
nature of the mystical act. 

More than the apprehension of God, then, more than the 
passion for the Absolute, is needed to make a mystic. These 
must be combined with an appropriate psychological make-up, 
with a nature capable of extraordinary concentration, an exalted 
moral emotion, a nervous organization of the artistic type. All 
these are necessary to the successful development of the mystic 


™ Récéjac, of. cét. p. 35. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 109 


life process. In the experience of the mystics who have left us 
the records of their own lives, the successive stages of this life 
process are always traceable. In the second part of this book, 
they will be found worked out at some length. Rolle, Suso, 
Madame Guyon, St. Teresa, and many others have left us 
valuable self-analyses for comparison: and from them we see 
how arduous, how definite, and how far removed from mere 
emotional or intellectual activity, is that educational discipline 
by which “the eye which looks upon Eternity” is able to come 
to itsown. “One of the marks of the true mystic,” says Leuba, 
“is the tenacious and heroic energy with which he pursues a 
definite moral ideal.”* “He is,’ says Pacheu, “the pilgrim of 
an inward Odyssey.”2 Though we may be amazed and 
delighted by his adventures and discoveries on the way, to him 
the voyage and the end are all. “The road on which we enter is 
a royal road which leads to heaven,” says St. Teresa. “ Is it 
strange that the conquest of such a treasure should cost us 
rather dear?” 3 

It is one of the many indirect testimonies to the objective 
reality of mysticism that the stages of this road, the psychology 
of the spiritual ascent, as described to us by different schools of 
contemplatives, always present practically the same sequence 
of states. The “school for saints” has never found it necessary 
to bring its curriculum up to date. The psychologist finds little 
difficulty, for instance, in reconciling the “ Degrees of Orison ” 
described by St. Teresa 4#—Recollection, Quiet, Union, Ecstasy, 
Rapt, the “ Pain of God,” and the Spiritual Marriage of the soul 
—with the four forms of contemplation enumerated by Hugh of 
St. Victor, or the Sifi’s “ Seven Stages” of the soul’s ascent to 
God, which begin in adoration and end in spiritual marriage.s 
Though each wayfarer may choose different landmarks, it is . 
clear from their comparison that the road is one. 

(5) As a corollary to these four rules, it is perhaps well to 
reiterate the statement already made, that 7rue Mysticism is 
never self-seeking. It is not, as many think, the pursuit of 


* Revue Philosophique, July, 1902. 

2 « Psychologie des Mystiques Chrétiens,” p. 14. 
3 ‘* Camino de Perfeccion,”’ cap. xxiii. 

4 In “‘ El Castillo Interior.” 

5 See Palmer, ‘‘ Oriental Mysticism,” pt. v. ch. v. 


110 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


supernatural joys; the satisfaction of a high ambition. The 
mystic does not enter on his quest because he desires the 
happiness of the Beatific Vision, the ecstasy of union with the 
Absolute, or any other personal reward. 

In “that strange, extravagant, and heroic character which 
calls itself a Christian mystic,”? that noblest of all passions, the 
passion for perfection for Love’s sake, far outweighs the desire 
for transcendental satisfaction. “O Love,” said St. Catherine of 
Genoa, “I do not wish to follow thee for sake of these delights, 
but solely from the motive of true love.” = Those who do other- 
wise are only, in the plain words of St. John of the Cross, 
“spiritual gluttons ”:3 or, in the milder metaphor here adopted, 
magicians of the more high-minded sort. _The true mystic 
claims no promises and makes no demands. He goes because 
he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail : knowing that for 
those who can live it, this alone is life. He never rests in that 
search for God which he holds to be the fulfilment of his highest 
duty; yet he seeks without any certainty of success. He holds 
with St. Bernard that “ He alone is God who can never be 
sought in vain: not even when He cannot be found.”4 With 
Mechthild of Magdeburg, he hears the Absolute saying in his 
soul, “O soul, before the world was I longed for thee: and I 
still long for thee, and thou for Me. Therefore, when our two 
desires unite, Love shall be fulfilled.” 5 

Like his type, the “devout lover” of romance, then, the 
mystic serves without hope of reward. By one of the many 
paradoxes of the spiritual life, he obtains satisfaction because he 
does not seek it; completes his personality because he gives it 
up. “Attainment,” says Dionysius the Areopagite in words 


- which are writ large on the annals of Christian ecstasy, “ comes 


- only by means of this sincere, spontaneous, and entire surrender 


26% 


of yourself and all things.6 Only with the annihilation of self- 
hood comes the fulfilment of love. Were the mystic asked the 
cause of his often extraordinary behaviour, his austere and 


steadfast quest, it is unlikely that his reply would contain any 


* Leuba, of. cét. 

? Vita, p. 8. 

3 ‘* Subida del Monte Carmelo,” 1. ii. cap. vii. 

4 ** De Consideratione,” 1. v. cap. xi. 

5 ‘* Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt. vii. cap. 16, 
6 «De Mystica Theologia,” i. I. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 111 


reference to sublime illumination or unspeakable delights. It is 
more probable that he would answer in some such words as 
those of Jacob Boehme, “I am'not come to this meaning, or to 
this work and knowledge through my own reason or through 
my own will and purpose; neither have I sought this knowledge 
nor so much as to know anything concerning it. I sought only 
for the heart of God, therein to hide myself.” ! | 

It has been well said that such a search is “not the quest of 
joy,” but “the satisfaction of a craving impelled by the spur of 
necessity.”2 This craving is the craving of the soul, unable to 
rest in those symbols of the sensual world which only feed the 
little tract of normal consciousness, to attain that fulness of life 
for which she was made: to “lose herself in That which can be 
neither seen nor touched; giving herself entirely to this sovereign 
Object without belonging either to herself or to others; united 
to the Unknown by the most noble part of herself and because 
of her renouncement of knowledge; finally drawing from this 
absolute ignorance a knowledge which the understanding knows 
not how to attain.”3 Mysticism, then, is seen as the “ one way 
out” for the awakened spirit of man. It is the healing of that 
human incompleteness which is the origin of our divine unrest : 
the inevitable reaction of the fully conscious, fully living soul 
upon “Eternal Truth, True Love, and Loved Eternity.”4 “I am 
sure,’ says Eckhart, “that if asoul knew the very least of all that 
Being means, it would never turn away from it.”5 The mystics 
have never turned away: to do so would have seemed to them 
a self-destructive act. Here, in this world of illusion, they say, 
we have no continuing city. This statement, to you a 
proposition, is to us the central fact of life. ‘‘ Therefore, it is 
necessary to hasten our departure from hence, and to be 
indignant that we are bound in one part of our nature, in order 
that with the whole of our selves, we may fold ourselves about 
Divinity, and have no part void of contact with Him.” 6 

To sum up. Mysticism is seen to be a highly specialized 
form of that search for reality, for heightened and completed 


* *€ Aurora,” English translation, 1764, p. 237. 

2 A. E. Waite, ‘‘ Strange Houses of Sleep,” p. 211. 

3 Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘‘ De Mystica Theologia,’’ i. 3. 

4 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. 10. 

5 **Mystische Schriften,” p. 137. © Plotinus, Ennead vi. 9. 


112 AN INTRODUCTION OF MYSTICISM 


life, which we have found to be a constant characteristic of 
human consciousness. It is largely prosecuted by that “ spiritual 
spark,” that transcendental faculty which, though the life of our 
life, remains below the threshold in ordinary men. Emerging 
from its hiddenness in the mystic, it gradually becomes the 
dominant factor in his life; subduing to its service, and 
enhancing by its saving contact with reality, those vital powers 
of love and will which we attribute to the heart; rather than 
those of mere reason and perception, which we attribute to the 
head. Under the spur of this love and will, the whole person- — 
ality rises in the acts of contemplation and ecstasy to a level of 
consciousness at which it becomes aware of a new field of 
perception. By this awareness, by this “loving sight,” it is 
stimulated to a new life in accordance with the Reality which it 
has beheld. So strange and exalted is this life, that it never 
fails to provoke either the anger or the admiration of other men. 
“If the great Christian mystics,” says Leuba, “could by some 
miracle be all brought together in the same place, each in his 
habitual environment, there to live according to his manner, the 
world would soon perceive that they constitute one of the most 
amazing and profound variations of which the human race has 
yet been witness.” ! 

A discussion of mysticism as a whole will therefore include 
two branches. First the life process of the mystic: the re- 
making of his personality ; the method by which his peculiar 
consciousness of the Absolute is attained, and faculties which 
have been evolved to meet the requirements of the phenomenal, 
are enabled to do work on the transcendental, plane. This is 
the “ Mystic Way” in which the self passes through the states 
, or stages of development which were codified by the Neo- 
' platonists, and after them by the mediaeval mystics, as Purgation, 
Illumination, and Ecstasy. Secondly, the content of the mystical 
field of perception; the revelation under which the contem- 
plative becomes aware of the Absolute. This will include a 
consideration of the so-called doctrines of mysticism: the 
attempts of the articulate mystic to sketch for us the world into 
which he has looked, in language which is only adequate to the 
world in which the rest of us dwell. Here the difficult question 
of symbolism, and of symbolic theology comes in; a point upon 


* Op. cit. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM 113 


which many promising expositions of the mystics have been 
wrecked. It will be our business to strip off as far as may 
be the symbolic wrapping, and attempt a synthesis of these 
doctrines ; to resolve the apparent contradictions of objective 
and subjective revelations, of the ways of negation and affirma- 
tion, emanation and immanence, surrender and deification, the 
Divine Dark and the Inward Light; and finally to exhibit, if 
we can, the essential unity of that experience in which the 
human soul enters consciously into the Presence of God. 


CHAPTER V 
MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 


Mystic diagrams—-Theology as used by the Mystics—Their conception ot God— 
Emanatio and Immanence—Emanation discussed—Dante—the Kabalists—Aquinas 
—Its psychological aspect—Immanence discussed—the basis of introversion—The 
*‘ground” of soul and universe—Emanation and Immanence compared —both 
accepted by the Mystics—Objections to this answered—Emanation and the Mystic 
Way—lIts reconciliation with Immanence—Both describe experience—are expressions 
of temperament—Mystical theology must include both—Theology is the Mystic’s 
map—Sometimes but not always adequate—Christianity the best of such Maps— 
It combines the metaphysical and personal aspects of the Divine — reconciles 
Emanation and Immanence—provides a congenial atmosphere for the Mystic— 
explains his adventures—All Western mystics implicitly Christian—Blake—The 
dogma of the Trinity—Division of Persons essential to the description of God—The 
indwelling and transcendent aspects of the Divine—St. Teresa—her vision of the 
' Trinity—Father, Word, Holy Spirit—Threefold division of Reality—Neoplatonic 
trinities—Lady Julian on the Trinity—Its psychological justification—Goodness, 
Truth, and Beauty—Trinitarian doctrine and the Mystics—Light, Life, Love—The 
Incarnation—its mystic aspeci— The Repairer—The Drama of Faith—The Eternal 
Birth of the Son—The New Birth in Man—Regeneration—-Conclusion 


the mystic who tastes supreme experience and the mystical 

philosopher who cogitates upon the data so obtained. We 
have now, however, to take account of the fact that the true 
mystic is also very often a mystical philosopher; though there” 
are plenty of mystical philosophers who are not and could 
never be mystics. 

Because it is characteristic of the human self to ee upon 
its experience, to use its percepts as material for the construction 
of a concept, most mystics have made or accepted a theory of 
their own adventures. Thus we have a mystical philosophy or 
theology—the comment of the intellect on the proceedings of 
spiritual intuition—running side by side with true or empirical 
mysticism : classifying its data, criticizing it, explaining it, and 

11g 


[ the last chapter we tried to establish a distinction between 


+ 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 115 


translating its vision of the supersensible into symbols which 
are amenable to dialectic. 

Such a philosophy is most usually founded upon the formal 
creed which the individual mystic accepts. It is characteristic 
of him that in so far as his transcendental activities are healthy 
he is generally an acceptor and not a rejector of such creeds. 
The view which regards the mystic as a spiritual anarchist 
receives little support from history ; which shows us, over and 
over again, the great mystics as faithful sons of the great 
religions. Almost any religious system which fosters un- 
earthly love is potentially a nursery for mystics: and Chris- 
tianity, Islam, Brahmanism, and Buddhism each receives its 
most sublime interpretation at their hands. } 

Thus St. Teresa interprets her ecstatic apprehension of the 
Godhead in strictly Catholic terms. Thus Boehme believed to 
the last that his explorations of eternity were consistent with 
the teaching of the Lutheran Church. Thus the Siifis were 
good Mohammedans, Philo and the Kabalists were orthodox 
Jews. Thus Plotinus even adapted—though with what difficulty! 
—the relics of paganism to his doctrine of the Real. 

Attempts, however, to limit mystical truth—the direct 
apprehension of the Divine Substance—to the formule of any 
one religion, are as futile as the attempt to identify a precious 
metal with the die which converts it into current coin. The 
dies which the mystics have used are many. Their peculiarities 
and excrescences are always interesting and sometimes highly 
significant. Some give a far sharper, more coherent, impression 
than others. But the gold from which this diverse coinage is 
struck is always the same precious metal: always the same 
Beatific Vision of a Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which 
is one. Hence its substance must always be distinguished 
from the accidents under which we perceive it : for this substance 
has a cosmic, and not a denominational, importance. 

If, however, we are to understand the language of the 
mystics, it is evident that we must know a little of accident 
as well as of substance: that is to say, of the principal philo- 
-sophies or religions which they have used in describing their 
adventures to the world. This being so, before we venture to 


* Ti. Rufus Jones (‘‘ Studies in Mystical Religion”) is at present the most 
eminent upholder of this opinion. 


116 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


apply ourselves to the exploration of theology proper, it will be 
well to consider the two extreme forms under which both 
mystics and theologians have been accustomed to conceive 
Divine Reality: that is to say, the so-called “emanation-theory” 
and “immanence-theory ” of the transcendental world. 

Emanation and Immanence are formidable words; which, 
though perpetually tossed to and fro by amateurs of religious 
philosophy, have probably, as they stand, little actuality for 
practical modern men. They are, however, root-ideas for the 
' maker of mystical diagrams: and his best systems are but 
attempts towards their reconciliation. Since the aim of every 
mystic is union with God, it is obvious that the vital question 
in his philosophy must be the place which this God, the Absolute 
of his quest, occupies in the scheme. Briefly, He has been 
conceived—or, it were better to say, presented—by the great 
mystics under two apparently contradictory modes. 

(1) The opinion which is represented in its most extreme 
form by the above-mentioned Theory of Emanations, declares 
His utter transcendence. This view appears early in the history 
of Greek philosophy. It is developed by Dionysius, by the 
Kabalists, by Dante: and is implied in the language of Rulman 
Merswin and many other Christian ecstatics. 

The solar system is an almost perfect symbol of this concept 
of the universe; which finds at once its most rigid and most 
beautiful expression in Dante’s “Paradiso.”! The Absolute 
Godhead is conceived as removed by a vast distance from the 
material world of sense; the last or lowest of that system of 
dependent worlds or states which, generated by or emanating 
from the Unity or Central Sun, become less in spirituality and — 
splendour, greater in multiplicity. the further they recede from 
their source. That Source—the Great Countenance of the 
Absolute—can never, say the Kabalists, be discerned by man. 
It is the Unplumbed Abyss of later mysticism: the Cloud 
of Unknowing wraps it from our sight. Only by its “emana- 
tions” or manifested attributes can we attain knowledge of it. 


* «*La gloria di colui che tutto move 
per Vuniverso penetra, e resplende 
in una parte pili e meno altrove ” (Par. i. 1-3). 


The theological ground-plan of the Cantica is epitomized in this introductory 
verse 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 117 


By the outflow of these same manifested attributes and 
powers the created universe exists, depending in the last resort 
on the datens dettas : Who is therefore conceived as external to 
the world which He illuminates and vivifies. 

St. Thomas Aquinas virtually accepts the doctrine of 
Emanations when he writes: “As all the perfections of 
Creatures descend in order from God, who is the height of 
perfection, man should begin from the lower creatures and 
ascend by degrees, and so advance to the knowledge of God. . . . 
And because in that roof and crown of all things, God, we find 
the most perfect unity; and everything is stronger and more 
excellent the more thoroughly it is one ; it follows that diversity 
and variety increase in things, the further they are removed 
from Him who is the first principle of all.” Suso, whose mystical 
system, like that of most Dominicans, is entirely consistent with 
Thomist philosophy, is really glossing Aquinas when he writes : 
“The supreme and superessential Spirit has ennobled man by 
illuminating him with a ray from the Eternal Godhead... . 
Hence from out the great ring which represents the Eternal 
Godhead there flow forth . . . little rings, which may be taken 
to signify the high nobility of natural creatures.” 2 

Obviously if this theory of the Absolute be accepted the 
path of the soul’s ascent to union with the divine must be 
literally a transcendence: a journey “upward and outward,” 
through a long series of intermediate states or worlds till, having 
traversed the “ Thirty-two paths of the Tree of Life,” she at last 
arrives, in Kabalistic language, at the Crown: fruitive knowledge 
of God, the Abyss or Divine Dark of the Dionysian school, 


the Neoplatonic One. Such a series of worlds is symbo- , 


lized by the Ten Heavens of Dante, the hierarchies of 
Dionysius, the Tree of Life or Sephiroth of the Kabalah: and 
receives its countersign in the inward experience, in the long 
journey of the self through Purgation and Illumination to 


Union, “We ascend,” says St. Augustine, “thy ways that be - 


in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly 


with thy fire, with thy good fire, and we go, because we go 


upwards to the peace of Jerusalem.” 3 
This theory postulates, under normal and non-mystical con- 


* ‘Summa Contra Gentiles,” 1. iv. cap. i. (Rickaby’s translation). 
* Leben, cap. lvi. 3 Aug. Conf., bk. xiii. cap. xi. 


118 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


ditions, the complete separation of the human and the divine ; 
the temporal and the eternal worlds. Hence the language of 
pilgrimage, of exile, of a world which has fallen from perfection 
into illusion and must make a long and painful return, comes 
naturally to the mystic who apprehends reality under these 
terms. To him the mystical adventure is essentially a “going 
forth” from his normal self and from his normal universe. 
Like the Psalmist “in his heart he hath disposed to ascend by 
steps in this vale of tears” from the less to the more divine. 
He, and with him the Cosmos—for we must never forget that 
to mystical philosophy the soul of the individual subject is the 
microcosm of the soul of the werld—has got to retrace the long 
road to the Perfection from which it originally came forth ; as 
the fish in Rulman Merswin’s Vision of Nine Rocks must 
struggle upwards from pool to pool until they reach their 
Origin. 

Such a way of conceiving Reality accords with the type of 
mind which William James has denominated the “sick soul.” # 
It is the mood of the contrite, of the penitent, of the utter 


humility which, appalled by the sharp contrast between itself : 


and the Perfect which it contemplates, can only cry “ out of the 
depths.” It comes naturally to the kind of temperament which 
leans to pessimism, which sees a “great gulf fixed” between 
itself and its desire, and is above all things sensitive to the 
elements of evil and imperfection in its own character and in 
the normal experience of man. Permitting these elements to 
_dominate its field of consciousness, wholly ignoring the divine 
aspect of the World of Becoming, such a temperament con- 
structs from its perceptions and prejudices the concept of a 
material world and a normal self which is very far from God. 
(2) [mmanence. At the opposite pole from this way ot 
sketching Reality is the extreme theory of Immanence, so 
fashionable amongst liberal theologians at the present time. 
To the holders of this theory, who belong of necessity to Pro- 
fessor James’s “healthy minded” or optimistic class, the quest of 
the Absolute is no long journey, but a realization of something 
which is implicit in the self and in the universe : an opening of 
the eyes of the soul upon the Reality in which it is bathed. 
For them earth is literally “crammed with heaven.” “Thou 


* “Varieties of Religious Experience,” Lecture vi. 


Sa eee 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 119 


wert I, but dark was my heart, I knew not the secret tran- 
scendent,” says Téwekkul Bég, a Moslem mystic of the seven- 
teenth century. This is always the cry of the temperament 
which leans to a theology of immanence, once its eyes are 
opened on the light. “God,” says Plotinus, “is not external to 
anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant 
that He is so.”2. In other and older words, “ The spirit of God 
is within you.” The Absolute Whom all seek does not hold 
Himself aloof from an imperfect material universe, but dwells 
within the flux of things: stands as it were at the very thres- 
hold of consciousness and knocks, awaiting the self’s slow dis- 
covery of her treasures. “He is not far from any one of us, for 
in Him we live and move and have our being,” is the pure 
doctrine of Immanence: a doctrine whose teachers are drawn 
from amongst the souls which react more easily to the touch of 
the Divine than to the sense of alienation and of sin, and are 
naturally inclined to love rather than to awe. The truth that 
“God and man initially meet where man is most inward ” 3—z.e., 
in the spark or ground of the soul—is the cardinal fact in their 
experience of the transcendental world. 

Unless safeguarded by limiting dogmas, the theory of 
Immanence, taken alone, is notoriously apt to degenerate into 
pantheism; and into those extravagant perversions of the 
doctrine of “deification” in which the mystic holds his trans- 
figured self to be identical with the Indwelling God. It is the 
philosophical basis of that practice of introversion, the turning 
inwards of the soul’s faculties in contemplation, which has been 
the “method” uf the great practical mystics of all creeds. That 
God, since He is in all—in a sense, zs all—may most easily be 
found within ourselves, is the doctrine of these adventurers ;4 
who, denying or ignoring the existence of those intervening 
“worlds” or “planes” between the material world and the 
Absolute, which are postulated by the theory of Emanations, 
claim with Ruysbroeck that “by a simple introspection in 


* Quoted by W. L. Lilly, ‘‘ Many Mansions,” p. 140. 

? Ennead vi. 9. . 

3 Boyce Gibson, ‘‘ Rudolph Eucken’s Philosophy,” p. 104. 

4 Thus Aquinas says, ‘‘ Since God is the universal cause of all Being, in whatever 
region Being can be found, there must be the Divine Presence ’’ (‘‘ Summa Contra 
Gentiles,” 1. iii. cap. Ixvili.). And we have seen that the whole claim of the mystics 
ultimately depends on man’s possession of pure being in ‘‘ the spark of the soul.” 


120 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


fruitive love” they “meet God without intermediary.” They 
hear the Father of Lights “saying eternally, without inter- 
mediary or interruption, in the most secret part of the spirit, 
the one unique, and abysmal Word.” 2 
This “divine” essence, or substance, which the introversive 
mystic finds dwelling, as Ruysbroeck says, at the apex of man’s 
spirit, is the “spark of the soul” of Eckhart, the “ ground” of 
Tauler, the Inward Light of the Quakers, the “ Divine Principle” 
of some modern transcendentalists ; the fount and source of all 
true life. At this point words and definitions fail mystic and 
theologian alike. A tangle of metaphors takes their place, 
He is face to face with the “ wonder of wonders”—that most 
real of all experiences, the union of human and divine, in a 
nameless something which is “great enough to be God, small 
enough to be me.” Hence at one moment the spark of the 
soul is presented to us as the divine to which the self attains: 
at another, as that transcendental aspect of the self which is in 
contact with God. On either hypothesis it is that in which 
the mystic encounters Absolute Being: and constitutes his 
guarantee of God’s immediate presence in the human heart; 
and, if in the human heart, then in that universe of which man’s 
soul resumes in miniature the essential characteristics, 
According to the doctrine of Immanence, creation, the 
universe, could we see it as it is, would be perceived as the self- 
development, the self-unfolding of this indwelling Deity. The 
world is not projected from the Absolute, but rather enshrines 
It. “I understood,” says St. Teresa, “how our Lord was in 
all things, and how He was in the soul: and the illustration of 
a sponge filled with water was suggested to me.”3 The world- 
process then, is the slow coming to fruition of that Divine Spark 
which is latent alike in the Cosmos and in man, “If,” says 
Boehme, “thou conceivest a small minute circle, as small asa 
grain of mustard seed, yet the Heart of God is wholly and per- 
fectly therein: and if thou art born in God, then there is in thy- 


* « T,’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. ii. cap. Ixxi. 

2 Op. cit., 1. iii. cap. 1. 

3 Relaccion, ix. 10. But this image of a sponge, which also suggested itsel. to 
St. Augustine, proved an occasion of stumbling to his more metaphysical mind : tend- 
ing to confuse his idea of the nature of God with the category of space. Vide Aug. 
Conf., bk, vii. cap. v, 


= 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 121 


self (in the circle of thy life) the whole Heart of God undivided.” : 
The idea of Immanence has seldom been more beautifully 
expressed, 

It is worth noticing that both the theological theories of 
reality which have been acceptable to the mystics implicitly 
declare, as modern science does, that the universe is not static 
but dynamic: a World of Becoming. According to the doctrine 
of Immanence this universe is free, self-creative. The Divine 
nests within it : no part is more removed from the Godhead than 
any other part. “God,” says Eckhart, “is nearer to me than I 
am to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they 
do not know it.”2 

These two apparently contradictory explanations of the 
Invisible have both been held, and that in their extreme form, 
by the mystics: who have found in both adequate and indeed 
necessary diagrams by which to demonstrate their experience 
of Reality.3 Some of the least lettered and most inspired 
amongst them—for instance, St. Catherine of Siena, Lady Julian 
of Norwich—and some of the most learned, as Dionysius the 
Areopagite and Meister Eckhart, have actually used in their 
rhapsodies language appropriate to both the theories of Emana- 
tion and of Immanence. It would seem, then, that both these 
theories must veil the truth ; and thatit is the business of a sound 
mystical philosophy to reconcile them, It is too often forgotten 
by quarrelsome partisans of a concrete turn of mind that at best 
all these transcendental theories are only symbols, methods, 
diagrams ; feebly attempting the representation of an experience 
which is always the same, and whose dominant characteristic 
is itsineffability. Hence they insist with tiresome monotony that 
Dionysius must be wrong if Tauler be right: that it is absurd 
to call yourself the Friend of God if unknowableness be that 
God’s first attribute: that Plato’s Perfect Beauty and Catherine 
of Siena’s Accepter of Sacrifices cannot be the same: that the 
“courteous and dear-worthy Lord” who said to Lady Julian, 
“ My darling, lam glad that thou art come to Me, in all thy 
wo I have ever been with thee,”4 rules out the formless and 


* ©The Threefold Life of Man,” cap. vi. § 71. 

2 Eckhart, Pred. Ixix. So too we read in the Oxyrhyncus Papyri, ‘‘ Raise the 
stone and there thou shalt find Me. Cleave the wood and there am I.”’ 

3 Compare above, cap. ii, 4 ** Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. xl. 


122 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


impersonal One of Plotinus, the “triple circle” of Suso and 
Dante. Finally, that if God be truly immanent in the material 
world, it is either sin or folly to refuse that world in order that 
we may find Him; and if introversion be right, a plan of the 
universe which postulates intervening planes between Absolute 
Being and the phenomenal world must be wrong. 

Now as regards the mystics, of whom we hold both these 
doctrines, these ways of seeing truth—for what else is a doctrine 
but that ?—it is well to remind ourselves that their teaching 
about the relation of the Absolute to the finite, of God to the 
phenomenal world, must be founded in the first instance on 
what they know by experience of the relation between that 
Absolute and the individual self. This experience is the valid 
part of mysticism, the thing which gives to it its unique import- 
ance amongst systems of thought, the only source of its 
knowledge. Everything else is really guessing aided by 
analogy. When therefore the mystic, applying to the 
universe what he knows to be true in respect of his own 
soul, describes Divine Perfection as very far removed from 
the material world, yet linked with it by a graduated series 
of “emanations ”—states or qualities which have each of them 
something of the godlike though they be not God—he is trying 
to describe the necessary life-process which he has himself 
passed through in the course of his purgation and spiritual 
ascent from the state of the “ natural man ” to that other state 
of harmony with the spiritual universe, sometimes called 
“ deification,” in which he is able to contemplate, and unite 
with, the divine. We have in the “ Divina Commedia” a classic 
example of such a two-fold vision of the inner and the outer 
worlds: for Dante’s journey up and out to the Empyrean 
Heaven is really an inward alchemy, an ordering and trans- 
muting of his nature, a purging of his spiritual sight till— 
transcending all derived beatitude—it can look for an instant 
on the Being of God, 

The mystic assumes—because he always assumes an orderly 
basis for things—that there is a relation, an analogy, between this 
microcosm of man’s self and the macrocosm of the world-self. 
Hence his experience, the geography of the individual quest, 
appears to him good evidence of the geography of the Invisible. 
Since he must transcend his natural life in order to attain con- © 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 123 


sciousness of God, he conceives of God as essentially transcendent 
tothe natural world. His description of that geography, however 
—of his path in a land where there is no time and space, no inner 
and no outer, up or down—will be conditioned by his tempera- 
ment, by his powers of observation, by the metaphor which 
comes most readily to his hand, above all by his theological 
education. The so-called journey itself is a psychological 
experience: the purging and preparation of the self, its 
movement to higher levels of consciousness, its unification 
with that more spiritual but normally subconscious self which 
is in touch with the transcendental order, and its gradual or 
abrupt entrance into union with the Real. Sometimes it 
seems to the self that this performance is a retreat inwards 
to that “ground of the soul” where, as St. Teresa says, 
“His Majesty awaits us”: sometimes a going forth from the 
Conditioned to the Unconditioned, the “supernatural flight ” 
of Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite. Both are but images 
under which the self conceives the process of attaining con- 
scious union with that God who is “at once immanent and 
transcendent in relation-to the soul which shares His Life.” 

He has got to find God. The quest is long; the end 
amazing. Sometimes his temperament causes him to lay 
most stress on the length of the search; sometimes the abrupt 
rapture which brings it to a close makes him forget that 
preliminary pilgrimage in which the souljis “not outward 
bound, but rather on a journey to its centryg@ii™ The Habitations 
of the Interior Castle through which isa conducts the 
ardent disciple to that hidden chambe is the sanctuary 
of the indwelling God: the hierarchies of “Dionysius, ascending 
from the selfless service of the angels, past the seraphs’ burning 
love to the God enthroned above time and space: the mystical 
paths of the Kabalistic Tree of Life, which lead from the 
material world of Malkuth through the universes of action and 
thought, by Mercy, Justice and Beauty to the Supernal 
Crown ;2 all these are different ways of seeing this same 
pilgrimage. 

As every one is born a disciple of either Plato or 
Aristotle, so every human soul leans to one of these two 
















ibson, ‘* God with Us,” p. 24. 
2. Waite, ‘‘ The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah,’’ pp. 36-53. 


* Boyc 
2 See 


124 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


ways of apprehending reality. The artist, the poet, every 
one who looks with awe and rapture on created things, 
acknowledges in this act the Immanent God. The ascetic, 
and that intellectual ascetic the metaphysician, turning from 
the created, denying the senses in order to find afar off the 
Uncreated, Unconditioned Source, is really—though often he 
knows it not—obeying that psychological law which produced 
the doctrine of Emanations. 

A good map then, a good mystical philosophy, will leave 
room for both these ways of interpreting experience. It will 
mark the routes by which many different temperaments claim 
to have found their way to the same end. It will acknowledge 
both the aspects under which the patria splendida Truth has 
appeared to its lovers: the aspects which have called forth the 
theories of emanation and immanence and are enshrined in 
the Greek and Latin names of God. Deus, whose root means 
day, shining, the Transcendent Light ; and Zeos, whose true 
meaning is supreme desire or prayer—the Inward Love—do 
not contradict, but complete each other. They form, when 
taken together, an almost perfect definition of that Absolute 
which is the object of the mystic’s desire: the Divine Love 
which, heing born in the soul, spurs on that soul to union with 
the transcendent and Absolute Light which is at once the 
source, the goal, the life of created things. 

The true mysty—the person with a genius for God—hardly 
needs a map hi , He steers a compass course across the 
“vast and stormy M&he divine.” It is characteristic of his 
intellectual humi wever, that he is always willing to use 
the map of the community in which he finds himself, when it 
comes to showing other people the route which he has pursued. 
Sometimes these maps have been adequate. More, they have 
elucidated the obscure wanderings of the explorer ; helped him ; 
given him landmarks; worked out right. Time after time he 
puts his finger on some spot—some great hill of vision, some 
city of the soul—and says with conviction, “ Heve have I been.” 
At other times the maps have embarrassed him, have refused to 
fit in with his description. Then he has tried, as Boehme did 
and after him Blake, to make new ones Such maps are often 
wild in drawing, because good draughtsmanship does (ot neces- 
sarily go with a talent for exploration, Departing Yom the 








MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 125 


usual convention, they are hard—sometimes impossible—to 
understand. As a result, the orthodox have been forced to 
regard their makers as madmen or heretics: when they were 
really only practical men struggling to disclose great matters by 
imperfect means, 

Now, without prejudice to individual beliefs and without 
offering an opinion as to the exclusive truth of any one religious 
system or revelation—for here we are concerned neither with 
controversy nor with apologetics—we are bound to allow as a 
historical fact that mysticism, so far, has found its best map 
in Christianity. Christian philosophy, especially that Neo- 
platonic theology which, taking up and harmonizing all that 
was best in the spiritual intuitions of Greece, India and Egypt, 
was developed by the great doctors of the early and mediaeval 
Church, supports and elucidates the revelations of the indi- 
vidual mystic as no other system of thought has been able to do. 

We owe to the great fathers of the first five centuries—to 
Clement of Alexandria and Irenzus, Gregory of Nyssa and 
Augustine; above all to Dionysius the Areopagite, the great 
Christian contemporary of Proclus—the preservation of that 
mighty system of scaffolding which enabled the Catholic mystics 
to build up the towers and bulwarks of the City of God. The 
peculiar virtue of this Christian philosophy, that which marks 
its superiority to the more coldly self-consistent systems of 
Greece, is the fact that it re-states the truths of metaphysics 
in terms of personality: thus offering a third term, a “living 
mediator” between the Unknowable God, the unconditioned 
Absolute, and the conditioned self. This was the priceless gift 
which the Wise Men received in return for their gold, frankin- 
cense, and myrrh. This solves the puzzle which all explorers 
of the supersensible have sooner or later to face: come sz 
convenne Limago al cerchio,s the reconciliation of Infinite and 
intimate, both known and felt, but neither understood. Such 
a third term, such a stepping-stone, was essential if mysticism 
were ever to attain that active union, that fullness of life which 
is its object, and develop from a blind and egoistic rapture into 
fruitful and self-forgetting love. 

Where non-Christian mystics, as a rule, have made a forced 
choice between the two great dogmatic expressions of their 


* Par. xxxiii. 137. 
, 4 


126 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


experience, (a) the long pilgrimage towards a transcendent and 
unconditioned Absolute, (4) the discovery of that Absolute in the 
“ ground ” or spiritual principle of the self; it has been possible 
to Christianity, by means of her central doctrine of the Trinity, 
to find room for both of them and to exhibit them as that 
which they are in fact—the complementary parts of a whole. 
Even Dionysius, the godfather of the emanation doctrine, com- 
bines with his scheme of descending hierarchies the dogma of 
an indwelling God: and no writer is more constantly quoted by 
Meister Eckhart, who is generally considered to have preached 
Immanence in its most extreme and pantheistic form. 

Further, the Christian atmosphere is the one in which the 
individual mystic has most often been able to develop his 
genius in a sane and fruitful way; and an overwhelming 
majority of the great European contemplatives have been 
Christians of a strong, impassioned and personal type. This 
alone would justify us in regarding it as representing, at any 
rate in the West, the formal side of the true tradition: the 
“path of least resistance” through which that tradition flows. 
In many cases the very heretics of Christianity have owed 
their greatness almost wholly to their mystical qualities. The 
Gnostics, the Fraticelli, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the 
Quietists, the Quakers, are instances of this. In others, it was 
to an excessive reliance on reason when dealing with the supra- 
rational, and a corresponding absence of trust in mystical 
intuition that heresy was due. Arius and Pelagius are 
heretics of this type. 

The greatest mystics, however, have not been heretics but 
Catholic saints. In Christianity the “natural mysticism” which, 
like “natural religion,” is latent in humanity, and at a certain 
voint of development breaks out in every race, came to itself; 
and attributing for the first time true and distinct personality 
to its Object, brought into focus the confused and unconditioned 
God which Neoplatonism had constructed from the abstract 
concepts of philosophy blended with the intuitions of Indian 
ecstatics, and made the basis of its meditations on the Real. 
It is a truism that the real claim of Christian philosophy on 
our respect does not lie in its exclusiveness but in its Catho- 
licity: in the fact that it finds truth in a hundred different 
systems, accepts and elucidates Greek, Jewish and Indian 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 127 


thought, fuses them in a coherent theology, and says to 
speculative thinkers of every time and place, “Whom there- 
fore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” 

The voice of Truth, which spoke once for all on Calvary 
and there declared the ground plan of the universe, was heard 
more or less perfectly by all the great seers, the intuitive 
leaders of men, the possessors of genius for the Real. There 
are few of the Christian names of God which were not known 
to the teachers of antiquity. To the Egyptians He was the 
Saviour, to the Platonists the Good, Beautiful and True, to 
the Stoics the Father and Companion. The very words of the 
Fourth Gospel are anticipated by Cleanthes. Heracleitus knew 
the Energizing Fire of which St. Bonaventura and Mechthild 
of Magdeburg speak. Countless mystics, from St. Augustine 
to St. John of the Cross, echo again and again the language 
of Plotinus. It is true that the differentia which mark off 
Christianity from all other religions are strange and poignant: 
but these very differentia make of it the most perfect of settings 
for the mystic life. Its note of close intimacy, of direct and 
personal contact with a spiritual reality given here and now— 
its astonishing combination of splendour and simplicity, of the 
sacramental and transcendent—all these things minister to the 
needs of the mystical type. 

Hence the Christian system, or some colourable imitation 
of it, has been found essential by almost all the great mystics 
of the West. They adopt its nomenclature, explain their adven- 
tures by the help of its creed, identify their Absolute with the 
Christian God. Amongst European mystics the most usually 
quoted exception to this rule is Blake; yet it is curious to 
notice that the more inspired his utterance, the more pas- 
sionately and dogmatically Christian even this hater of the 
Churches becomes :— 

**We behold 
Where Death eternal is put off eternally. O Lamb 
Assume the dark satanic body in the Virgin’s womb! 
O Lamb divine! it cannot thee annoy! O pitying One, 
Thy pity is from the foundation of the world, and thy Redemption 
Begins already in Eternity.” * 


This is the doctrine of the Incarnation in a nutshell: here 


* 6 Vala,” vill. 237- 


128 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


St. Thomas himself would find little to correct. Of the two. 
following extracts from “Jerusalem,” the first is but a poet’s 
gloss on the Catholic’s cry, “ O felix culpa!” the second is an 
almost perfect epitome of Christian theology and ethics :— 


‘*If I were pure, never could I taste the sweets 
Of the forgiveness of sins. If I were holy, I never could behold the tears 
Of Love... O Mercy! O divine Humanity ! 
O Forgiveness, O Pity and Compassion! If I were pure I should never 
Have known Thee.” 


** Wouldst thou love one who never died 
For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee? 
And if God dieth not for man, and giveth not Himself 
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist, for Man is Love 
As God is Love. Every kindness to another is a little death 
In the Divine Image, nor can Man exist but by brotherhood.’ *? 


What needs to be emphasized is this: that whether the 
dogmas of Christianity be or be not accepted on the scientific 
and historical plane, they are necessary to an adequate descrip- 


_— —~ 


i ee 


adel 


4 
a 


tion of mystical experience—at least, of the fully developed q 


dynamic mysticism of the West. We must therefore be pre- 
pared in reading the works of the contemplatives for much 
strictly denominational language; and shall be wise if we 
preface the encounter by some consideration of this language, 
and of its real meaning for those who use and believe it. 
No one needs, I suppose, to be told that the two chief 
features of Christian schematic theology are the dogmas of 


the Trinity and the Incarnation. They correlate and explain © 


each other: forming together, for the Christian, the “final key” 
to the riddle of the world. The history of practical Chris- 
tianity is the history of the attempt to exhibit their meaning 
in space and time. The history of mystical philosophy is the 
history—still incomplete—of the demonstration of their meaning 
in eternity. 

Some form of Trinitarian dogma is found to be essential, 


as a method of describing observed facts, the moment that — 


mysticism begins either (2) to analyse its own psychological 
conditions, or (4) to philosophize upon its intuitions of the 
Absolute. It must, that is to say, divide the aspects under 


* © Terusalem,” lxi. 44 and xcv. 23. 


<, 


ee oe 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 129 


which it knows the Godhead, if it is to deal with them in a 
fruitful or comprehensible way. The Unconditioned One, 
which is, for Neoplatonist and Catholic alike, the final 
object of the mystic quest, cannot of itself satisfy the deepest 
instincts of humanity: for man is aware that diversity in unity 
is a necessary condition if perfection of character is to be 
expressed. Though the idea of unity alone may serve to 
define the End—and though the mystics return to it again 
and again as a relief from that “heresy of multiplicity” by 
which they are oppressed—it cannot by itself be adequate 
to the description of the All. 

The first question, then, must be—How many of such 
aspects are necessary to the complete presentment of the 
mystic’s position? How many faces of Reality does he see? 
At the very least, as we have already seen, he must be aware 
of two aspects: (a) that Holy Spirit within, that Divine Life by 
which his own life is transfused and upheld, and of which he 
becomes increasingly conscious as his education proceeds ; 
(4) that Transcendent Spirit without, the “ Absolute,” towards 
union with which the indwelling and increasingly dominant 
spirit of love pushes the developing soul. It is the function 
of ecstasy to fuse these two aspects of God—to bring back, 
in mystical language, the Lover to the Beloved—but it is no 
less the function of mystical philosophy to separate them. 
Over and over again the mystics and their critics acknowledge, . 
explicitly or implicitly, the necessity of this act. 

Thus even the rigid monotheism of Israel and Islam cannot, 
in the hands of the Kabalists and the Sifis, get away from an 
essential dualism in the mystical experience. According to the 
Zohar, says Mr. A. E. Waite, its best modern student, “God is 
considered as immanent in all that has been created or eman- 
ated, and yet is transcendent to all.”! So too the Sifis. God, 
they say, is to be contemplated (a) outwardly in the imperfect 
beauties of the earth; (6) inwardly, by meditation. Further, 
since He is One, and in all things, “to conceive one’s self as 
separate from God is an error: yet only when one sees oneself as 
separate from God, can one reach out to God. 2 

Thus Delacroix, speaking purely as a psychologist, and 


* A. E. Waite, ‘‘ The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah,” p. 35. 
* Palmer, “ Oriental Mysticism,” pt. i. cap. i. 
K 


130 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


denying to the mystical revelation—which he attributes ex- 
clusively to the normal content of the subliminal mind—any 
transcendental value, writes with entire approval of St. Teresa, 
that she “set up externally to herself the definite God of the 
Bible, at the same time as she set up within her soul the 
confused God of the Pseudo-Areopagite: the One of Neo- 
platonism. The first is her guarantee of the orthodoxy of the 
second, and prevents her from losing herself in an indistinction 
which is non-Christian. The confused God within is highly 
dangerous. ... St. Teresa knew how to avoid this peril, and, 
served by her rich subconscious life, by the exaltation of her 
mental images, by her faculty of self-division on the one hand, 
on the other by her vare powers of unification, she realized 
simultaneously a double state in which the two Gods [z.2., the 
two ways of apprehending God, transcendence and immanence] 
were guarantees of each other, mutually consolidating and 
enriching one another: such is the intellectual vision of the 
Trinity in the Seventh Habitation.” =? 

It is probable that St. Teresa, confronted by this astonishing 
analysis, would have objected that her Trinity, unlike that of her 
eulogist, consisted of three and not two Persons. - His language 
concerning confused interior and orthodox exterior Gods would 
certainly have appeared to her delicate and honest mind both 
clumsy and untrue: nor could she have allowed that the 
Unconditioned One of the Neoplatonists was an adequate 
description of the strictly personal Divine Majesty Whom she 
found enthroned in the inmost sanctuary of the Castle of the 
Soul. | 
What St. Teresa really did was to actualize in her own 
experience, apprehend in the “ground of her soul” by means 
of her extraordinarily developed transcendental perceptions, 
the three distinct and personal Aspects of the Godhead which 
are acknowledged by the Christian religion. ( 

First, the Father, pure transcendent Being, creative Source 
and Origin of all that Is: the Unconditioned and Unknowable 
One of the Neoplatonist: Who is to be conceived, pace M. 
Delacroix, as utterly transcendent to the subject rather than 
“set up within the soul.” | 


® Delacroix, ‘‘ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” p. 75. The reference in the last sentence 
is to St. Teresa’s ‘‘ Castillo Interior,” 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 131 


Secondly, in the Person of Christ, Teresa isolated and 
distinguished the Logos or Creative Word, the expression, 
outbirth, or manifestation of the Father’s thought. Here is 
the point at which the Divine Substance first becomes appre- 
hensible by the spirit of man; here that mediating principle 
“raised up between heaven and earth” which is at once the 
Mirror of Pure Being and the Light of a finite world. The 
Second Person of the Christian Trinity is for the believer not 
only the brightness or manifestation of Deity, but also the 
personal, inexhaustible, and responsive Fount of all life and 
Object of all love: Who, because of His taking up (in the 
Incarnation) of humanity into the Godhead, is of necessity 
the one and only Bridge between the finite and _ infinite, 
between the individual and the Absolute Life, and hence in 
mystic language the “true Bridegroom” of every human soul. 

Thirdly, she recognized within herself the germ of that 
Absolute Life, the indwelling Spirit which is the source of 
man’s transcendental consciousness and his link with the Being 
of God. That is to say, the Holy Spirit of Divine Love, the 
Real Desirous seeking for the Real Desired, without Whose 
presence any knowledge of or communion with God on man’s 
part would be inconceivable. 

In the supreme Vision of the Trinity which was vouchsafed 
to St. Teresa in the Seventh Habitation of the soul, these 
three aspects became fused in One, In the deepest recesses 
of her spirit, in that unplumbed abyss where selfhood ceases 
to have meaning, and the individual soul touches the life of 
the All, distinction vanished and she “saw God in a point.” 
Such an experience, such an intuition of simple and undifferenti- 
ated Godhead—the Unity—beyond those three centres of Divine 
Consciousness which we call the Trinity of Persons, is highly 
characteristic of mysticism. The German mystics—tempera- 
mentally miles asunder from Teresa—described it as the 
attainment of the “ still wilderness” or “lonely desert of 
Deity ”: the limitless Divine Abyss, impersonal, indescribable, 
for ever hid in the Cloud of Unknowing, and yet the true 
Country of the Soul.? | 


* See Tauler, Sermon on St. John Baptist, and Third Instruction (‘* The Inner 
Way,” pp. 97 and 321) ; Suso, ‘‘ Buchlein von der Wahrheit,” cap. v. ; Ruysbroeck, 
“«T’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,”’ 1. iii, caps. ii. and vi. 


132 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


These propositions, which appear when thus laid down to 
be hopelessly academic, violently divorced from life, were not 
for St. Teresa or any other Christian mystic propositions at all; 
but attempts towards the description of first-hand experience. 
“How this vision comes to pass,” she says, “I know not; but 
it does come to pass, and the three Persons of the Holy Trinity 
then show themselves to the soul with a radiance as of fire, 


which, like a shining cloud, first invades the mind and admirably . 
illuminates it. Then she sees those three distinct Persons, and 


she knows with a sovereign truth that these three are One in 
substance, One in Power, One in wisdom, One God: so that 
those things which we know in this world by faith, the soul, in 
this light, understands by a sort of vision which is neither the 
vision of the body nor that of the soul; for it is not a sensible 
vision. There those three Persons communicate Themselves to 
the soul, and speak to her and .. . it seems to her that these 
three divine Persons have never left her: she sees clearly, in the 
manner which I have described, that they are within her soul, 
in its most inward part, as it were within a deep abyss. This 
person, a stranger to learning, knows not how to tell what is 
this deep abyss, but it is there that she feels within herself this 
divine companionship.” ! 

Mystical writers remind us over and over again, that life as 
perceived by the human mind shows an inveterate tendency to 
arrange itself in triads: that if they proclaim the number Three 
in the heavens, they can also point to it as dominating every- 
where upon the earth. Here Christianity did but give form 
to the deepest instinct of the human mind: an instinct which 


made Pythagoras call Three the number of God because © 
beginning, middle, and end were contained therein. Thus to ~ 
Hindu thought the Absolute Godhead was unknowable, but — 
He disclosed three faces to man—Brahma the Creator, © 
Shiva the Destroyer, Krishna the Repairer—and these three — 
were One. So too the Neoplatonists, touched by the spirit — 


of the East, distinguished three worlds; the Sensible or 


Phenomenal, the Rational or Intellectual, the Intelligible or | 


Spiritual; and three aspects of God—the Unconditioned 


Absolute, the Logos or Artificer, and the divine Essence or — 
Spirit which is both absolute and created. We have here, as 


* St. Teresa, ‘‘ El Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sétimas, cap. i. 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 133 


it were, the first sketch of the Christian Trinity; the dry 
bones awaiting the breath of more abundant life. Correspond- 
ing with this diagram of God’s nature, they see also three 
grades of beauty; the Corporeal, the Spiritual, and the Divine. 

Man, that “thing of threes,” of body, soul and spirit, follows 
in his path towards unity the Threefold Way: for “our soul,” 
says Lady Julian, “is made-trinity like to the unmade blissful 
Trinity, known and loved from without beginning, and in the 
making oned to the Maker.” So too we have seen that 
the psychic self is most easily understood by a division into 
Emotion, Intellect, and Will. Even the separation of things 
into Subject and Object implies a third term, the relation 
between them, without which no thought can be complete. 
Therefore the very principle of analogy imposes upon man a 
Trinitarian definition of Reality as the one with which his 
mind is best able to cope.?__ It is easy for the hurried rationalist 
to demonstrate the absurdity of this circumstance, but he will 
find it a very different matter when it comes to disproving it. 

“T could wish,” says St. Augustine, “that men would con- 
sider these three things that are in themselves ... To Be, To 
Know, and to Will. For I am, and I know, and I will; I am 
knowing and willing, and I know myself to be and to will; and 
I will to be and to know. In these three therefore let him who 
can, see how inseparable a life there is—even one life, one mind 
one essence: finally, how inseparable is the distinction, and yet 
a distinction. Surely a man hath it before him: let him look 
into himself and see and tell me. But when he discovers and 
can see anything of these, let him not think that he has dis- 
covered that which is above these Unchangeable: which Is 
unchangeably and Knows unchangeably and Wills’ un- 
changeably.” 3 

In one of the best recorded instances of pure mystical 


vision, Julian of Norwich saw the Trinity of the Divine Nature 


shining in the phenomenal as well as in the spiritual world. 


t Julian of Norwich, ‘‘ Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. lv. So St. Thomas says 
(**Summa Contra Gentiles,” 1. iv. cap. xxvi), ‘A likeness of the Divine Trinity is 
observable in the human mind.” 

2 ‘¢The three Persons of the Trinity,” said John Scotus Erigena, ‘‘ are less modes 
of the Divine Substance than modes under which our mind conceives the Divine 
Substance’’—a stimulating statement ot dubious orthodoxy. 

3 Aug. Conf., bk. xiii. cap. xi. 


134 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


“He showed me,” she says, “a little thing, the quantity of an 
hazel nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a 
ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, 
and thought, What may this be? And it was.answered gener- 
ally thus: J¢ zs all that 1s made. . . . In this Little Thing I saw 
three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is 
that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it. But what 
is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, | 
cannot tell.” # 

Julian the anchoress, a simple and deeply human English- 
woman of middle age dwelling alone in her churchyard cell 
with only a tiny window by which to see and hear the outer 
world, might well be called the poet of the Trinity: that 
austere and subtle dogma of which the mystics of the fourteenth 
century write with a passion which will be little understood by 
those who look upon it as “orthodoxy reduced to mathematics.” 

That most lovable and poetic of visionaries, who seems in 
her Revelations of Love to dream before a Crucifix set up in 
flowery fields, treats this highly metaphysical doctrine with a 
homely intimacy and a vigorous originality which carry with 
them at any rate a conviction of her own direct and personal 
apprehension of the truth which she struggles to describe. “I 
beheld,” she says of a vision which is closely parallel to that of 
St. Teresa in the “Seventh Habitation of the Soul,” and far more 
lucidly if less splendidly expressed, “the working of all the 
blessed Trinity: in which beholding, I saw and understood 
these three properties: the property of the Fatherhood, the 
property of the Motherhood, and the property of the Lordhood, 
in one God. In our Father Almighty we have our keeping and 
our bliss as anent our natural Substance,? which is to us by our 
making, without beginning. And in the Second Person in wit 
and wisdom we have our keeping as anent our Sense-soul: our 
restoring and our saving ; for He is our Mother, Brother, and | 
Saviour. And in our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, we have our. 
rewarding and our meed-giving for our living and our travail, 
and endless overpassing of all that we desire, in His marvellous 
courtesy, of His high plenteous grace. For all our life is in 


* Of. cit., cap. v. : 
2 Sub iades is here, of course, to be understood in the scholastic sense, as the 
reality which underlies merely phenomenal existence. 





MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 135 


three: in the first we have our Being, in the second we have 
our Increasing, and in the third we have our Fulfilling ; the first 
is Nature, the second is Mercy, and the third is Grace... 
The high Might of the Trinity is our Father, and the deep 
Wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, and the great Love of 
the Trinity is our Lord: and all this we have in Nature and 
in our Substantial Making.”2 

Again, in a passage of exquisite tenderness, which comes 
after the fire and dark of Teresa like cooling waters to the soul: 
“As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother ; 
and that shewed He in all [her revelations] and especially in 
these sweet words where He saith: J z# am. That is to say, 
I tt am, the Might and the Goodness of the Fatherhood ; I it am, 
the Wisdom of the Motherhood; I tt am, the Light and the Grace 
that 1s all blessed Love; I tt am, the Trinity, I tt am, the Unity: 
lam the sovereign Goodness of all manner of things. I am that 
maketh thee to love: Tam that maketh thee to long: I tt am, the 
endless fulfilling of all true desires.” 3 

So Christopher Hervey— 


**The whole world round is not enough to fill 
The heart’s three corners, but it craveth still. 
Only the Trinity that made it can 
Suffice the vast triangled heart of Man.” 4 


It is a fact that any attempt towards a definition of God 
which does not account for and acknowledge these three aspects 
is found in experience to be incomplete. They provide objec- 
tives for the heart, the intellect, and the will: for they offer to 
the Self material for its highest love, its deepest thought, its 
act of supreme volition. Under the familiar Platonic terms of 
Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, they represent the divine source 
and end of Ethics, Science, and Art, the three supreme activities 


* J.e., the Second Person or the Christian Trinity is the redemptive ‘‘ fount ot 
mercy,” the medium by which Grace, the free gift of transcendental life, reaches and 
vivifies human nature: ‘‘ permeates it,” in Eucken’s words, ‘‘ with the Infinite and 
Eternal” (‘‘ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 181). 

2 ‘ Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. Iviii. 

3 Op. cit., cap. lix. 

4 “The School of the Heart,’ Epigram x. This book, which is a free transla- 
tion of the ‘‘ Scola Cordis” of Benedict Haeften (1635), is often, but wrongly, attributed 
to Francis Quarles. 


136 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of man. Thus the ideals of artist, student, and philanthropist, 
who all seek under different modes the same reality, are gathered 
up in the mystic’s One; as the pilgrimage of the three kings 
ended in the finding of one Star. 

“What is God?” says St. Bernard. “Length, breadth, 
height, and depth, ‘What,’ you say, ‘you do after all profess 
to believe in the fourfold Godhead which was an abomination 
to your’ Not in the least. . . . God is designated One to suit 
our comprehension, not to describe His character. A7s character 
ts capable of division, He Himself ts not. The words are different, 
the paths are many, but one thing is signified; the paths lead 
to one Person.” ! 

All possible ways of conceiving this One Person are found 
in the end to range themselves under three heads. He is “above 
all and through all and in you all,”2 said St. Paul, anticipating 
the Councils in a flash of mystic intuition, and giving to the 
infant Church the shortest and most perfect definition of its 
Triune God. Being, which is above all, manifests itself as 
Becoming; as the dynamic, omnipresent Word of Life. The 
Divine Love immanent in the heart and in the world comes 
forth from, and returns to, the Absolute One. Thus is com- 
pleted “the Eternal Circle from Goodness, through Goodness, to 
Goodness.” 3 It is true that to these fundamental aspects of the 
perceived Godhead—that Being, Becoming, and Desire whereto 
the worlds keep time—the mystics have given many and various 
names; for they have something of the freedom of true intimates 
in treating of the Reality which they love. In particular, those 
symbols of the Absolute which are drawn from the great and 
formless forces of the universe, rather than from the orthodox 
but necessarily anthropomorphic imagery of human relationship, 
have always appealed to them. Their intense apprehension of 
Spirit seems to find freer and more adequate expression in such 
terms, than in those in which the notion of space is involved or 
which are capable of suggesting a concrete picture to the mind. 
Though they know as well as the philosophers that “there must 
always be something symbolic in our way of expressing the 
spiritual life,” since “that unfathomable infinite whose spiritual 
character is first recognized in our human experience, can never 
reveal itself fully and freely under the limitation of our earthly 


* «De Consideratione,” bk. v. cap. viii. * Ephesiansiv.6. 3 Compare p. 49. 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 137 


existence”!; yet they ever seek, like the artists they are, some 
new and vital image which is not yet part of the debased 
currency of popular religion, and conserves its original power of 
stinging the imagination to more vivid life. 

Thus “the Kingdom of Heaven,” says Law, “stands in this 
threefold life, where three are one, because it is a manifestation 
of the Deity, which is Three and One; the Father has His dis- 
tinct manifestation in the Fire, which is always generating the 
Light ; the Son has His distinct manifestation in the Light, 
which is always generated from the Fire; the Holy Ghost has 
His manifestation in the Spirit, that always proceeds from both, 
and is always united with them. It is this eternal unbeginning 
Trinity in Unity of Fire, Light, and Spirit, that constitutes 
Eternal Nature, the Kingdom of Heaven, the heavenly Jeru- 
salem, the Divine Life, the Beatific Visibility, the majestic 
Glory and Presence of God. Through this Kingdom of Heaven, 
or Eternal Nature, is the invisible God, the incomprehensible 
Trinity, eternally breaking forth and manifesting itself in a 
boundless height and depth of blissful wonders, opening and 
displaying itself to all its creatures as in an infinite variation 
and endless multiplicity of its powers, beauties, joys, and 
glories.” 2 

Perhaps an easier, better, more beautiful example of these 
abstract symbols of the Trinity than Law’s Fire, Light, and 
Spirit is that of Light, Life, and Love: a threefold picture of 
the Real which is constantly dwelt upon and elaborated by the 
Christian mystics. Transcendent Light, intangible but un- 
escapeable, ever emanating Its splendour through the Universe: 
indwelling, unresting, and energizing Life: desirous and direc- 
tive Love—these are cardinal aspects of Reality to which they 
return again and again in their efforts to find words which will 
express the inexpressible truth. 

(2) LIGHT, ineffable and uncreated, the perfect symbol of 
pure undifferentiated Being: above the intellect, as St. Augus- 
tine reminds us, but known to him who loves.3 This Uncreated 


* Eucken, ‘* Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 131. 

2 **An Appeal to All who Doubt” (‘‘ Liberal and Mystical Writings of William 
Law,” p. 54). Law’s symbols are here borrowed from the system of his master, 
Jacob Boehme. (See the ‘‘De Signatura Rerum” of Boehme, cap. xiv.) 

3 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. x. 


138 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Light is the “deep yet dazzling darkness” of the Dionysian 
school, “dark from its surpassing brightness . . . as the shining 
of the sun on his course is as darkness to weak eyes.”! It is 
Hildegarde’s lux vivens, Dante’s somma luce, wherein he saw 
multiplicity in unity, the ingathered leaves of all the universe ?: 
the Eternal Father, or Fount of Things. “For well we know,” 
says Ruysbroeck, “that the bosom of the Father is our ground 
and origin, wherein our life and being is begun.” 3 

(6) LIFE, the Son, hidden Steersman of the Universe, the 
Logos, Fire, or Cosmic soul of things. This out-birth or Con- 
cept of the Father’s Mind, which He possesses within Himself, 
as Battista Vernazza was told in her ecstasy,4 is that Word of 
Creation which, since It is alive and infinite, no formula can 
contain: the Word eternally “spoken” or generated by the 
Transcendent Light. “This is why,” says Ruysbroeck again, 
“all that lives in the hidden unity of the Father lives also in 
the Son.”5 This life, then, is the flawless expression or 
character of the Father, Sapzentza Patris. It is at once the 
personal and adorable Object of the mystic’s adventure—his 
closest comrade and his beckoning star—and the inmost prin- 
ciple, the sustaining power, of a dynamic universe; for that 
which intellect defines as the Logos or Cosmic Spirit, contem- 
plative love Anows as Wonderful, Counsellor, and Prince of 
Peace. 

Since Christ, for the Christian philosopher, zs Divine Life 
Itself—the drama of Christianity but expressing this fact and 
its implications “in a point ”—it follows that His active spirit is 
to be discerned, not symbolically, but in the most veritable 
sense, in the ecstatic and abounding life of the world. In the 
rapturous vitality of the birds, in their splendid glancing flight : 
in the swelling of buds and the sacrificial beauty of the flowers : 
in the great and solemn rhythms of the sea—there is somewhat 
of Bethlehem in all these things, somewhat too of Calvary in 
their self-giving pains. It was this re-discovery of Nature’s 
Christliness which Blake desired so passionately when he sang— 


* Tauler, 3rd Instruction (‘* The Inner Way,” p. 324). 

? Par. xxxili. 67, 85. 

3 “*T’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” |. iii. cap. v. 

4 Von Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. i. p. 357. 
5 Ruysbroeck, of. ctt., doc. cit. 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 139 


**T will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England’s green and pleasant land.” 


Here then it is, on this remote and airy pinnacle of faith, at 
the utmost boundaries of human speech, that mystical theology 
suddenly shows herself—not as the puzzle-headed constructor 
of impossible creeds, but as accepting and transmuting to a 
more radiant life those two profound but apparently contra- 
dictory metaphysical definitions of Reality which we have 
already discussed.t Eternal Becoming, God immanent and 
dynamic, striving with and in His world: the unresting “ flux 
of things” of Heracleitus, the crying aloud of that Word 
“which is through all things everlastingly "—the evolutionary 
world-process beloved of modern philosophers—is here placed 
once for all in true relation with pure transcendent and un- 
moved Being; the Absolute One of Xenophanes and the 
Platonists. This Absolute is discerned by mystic intuition as 
the “End of Unity” in whom all diversities must cease ;2 
the Ocean to which that ceaseless and painful Becoming, that 
unresting river of life, in which we are immersed, tends to 
return: the Son going to the Father. 

(c) LOVE, the principle of attraction, which seems to partake 
at once of the transcendental and the created worlds. If we 
consider the Father as Supreme Subject—“ origin,’ as Aquinas 
says, “of the entire procession of Deity”3—and the Son or 
generated Logos as the Object of His thought, in whom, says 
Ruysbroeck, “He contemplates Himself and all things in an 
eternal Now” ;4 then this personal Spirit of Love, z/ desivo e il 
velle, represents the relation between the two, and constitutes 
the very character of the whole. “They breathe forth a 
spirit,’ says Ruysbroeck, of the First and Second Persons 
“which is their will and love.”5 Proceeding, according to 
Christian doctrine, from Light and Life, the Father and Son— 
implicit, that is, in both the Absolute Source and dynamic flux 
of things—this divine and unresting spirit of desire is found 


* Supra, Cap. II. 2 Tauler, of. cit., loc. cit. 
3 ** Summa Contra Gentiles,” 1. iv. cap. xxvi. 
x 4 “* TOrnement des Noces Spirituelles,” ]. iii. cap. v. 


5 Op. cit., 1. il. cap. Xxxvii 


140 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


enshrined in our very selfhood; and is the agent by which 
that selfhood is merged in the Absolute Self. ‘“ My love is my 
weight,” said St. Augustine It is the spiritual equivalent of 
that gravitation which draws all things to their place. Thus 
Bernard Holland says in his Introduction to Boehme’s “ Dia- 
logues,” “In a deep sense, the desire of the Spark of Life in the 
Soul to return to its Original Source is part of the longing desire 
of the universal Life for its own heart or centre. Of this longing, 
the universal attraction, striving against resistance, towards a 
universal centre, proved to govern the phenomenal or physical 
world, is but the outer sheath and visible working.” Again, 
“ Desire is everything in Nature; does everything. Heaven is 
Nature filled with divine Life attracted by Desire.” 2 

“The best masters say,” says Eckhart, “that the love. 
wherewith we love is the Holy Spirit.3 Some deny it. But 
this is always true: all those motives by which we are moved 
to love, in these is nothing else than the Holy Spirit.” 4 

“God wills,” says Ruysbroeck, gathering these scattered 
symbols to unity again, “that we should come forth from our- 
selves in this Eternal Light ; that we should pursue in a super- 
natural manner that image which is our true Life, and that we 
should possess it with Him actively and fruitively in eternal 
blessedness ... this going forth of the contemplative is also 
in Love: for by fruitive love he overpasses his created essence 
and finds and tastes the riches and delights of God, which He 
causes to flow without ceasing in the most secret chamber of 
the soul, at that place where it is most like unto the sublimity 
of God.” 5 

Here only, in the innermost sanctuary of being, the soul’s 
“last habitation,’ as St. Teresa said, is the truth which these 
symbols express truly known: for “as to how the Trinity is 


* Aug. Conf,, bk. xiii. cap. ix. 

? Introduction to ‘‘ Three Dialogues of the Supersensual Life,” p. xxx. 

3 Probably St. Thomas Aquinas, the usual source of Eckhart’s more orthodox 
utterances. Compare ‘‘Summa Contra Gentiles,” 1. iv. cap. xxiii: ‘‘Since the 
Holy Ghost proceeds as the love wherewith God loves Himself, and since God loves 
with the same love Himself and other beings for the sake of His own goodness, it is 
clear that the love wherewith God loves us belongs to the Holy Ghost. In like 
manner also the love wherewith we love God.” 

4 Pred. xii. 

5 * T’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. iii. cap. v. 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 141 


one and the Trinityin the unity of the nature is one, whilst 
nevertheless the Trinity comes forth from the unity, this cannot 
be expressed in words,” says Suso, “owing to the simplicity of 
that deep abyss. Hither it is, into this intelligible where that 
the spirit, spiritualizing itself, soars up; now flying in the 
measureless heights, now swimming in the soundless deeps, of 
the sublime marvels of the Godhead!” 

Mystical philosophy, then, has availed itself gladly of 
the doctrine of the Trinity in expressing its vision of the 
nature of that Absolute which is found, by those who attain the 
deep Abyss of the Godhead, to be essentially One. But it is 
by the complementary Christian dogma of the Incarnation 
that it has best been able to describe and explain the 
nature of the inward and personal mystic experience. “ Man 
in the course of his attainment,” says a living authority on 
mysticism, “is at first three—body, soul, and spirit—that is, 
when he sets out on the Great Quest; he is two at a certain 
stage—when the soul has conceived Christ, for the spirit has 
then descended and the body is for the time being outside the 
Divine Alliance ; but he is in fine one—that is to say, when 
the whole man has died in Christ—which is the term of his 
evolution.” 2 

The Incarnation, which is for popular Christianity synony- 
mous with the historical birth and earthly life of Christ, is for the 
mystic not only this but also a perpetual Cosmic and personal 
process. It is an everlasting bringing forth, in the universe 
and also in the individual ascending soul, of the divine and 
perfect Life, the pure character of God, of which the one his- 
torical life dramatized the essential constituents. Hence the 
soul, like the physical embryo, resumes in its upward progress , 
the spiritual life-history of the race. “The one secret, the : 
greatest of all,” says Patmore, is “the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, regarded not as an historical event which occurred two 
thousand years ago, but as an event which is renewed in the 
body of every one who is in the way to the fulfilment of his 
original destiny.” 3 

We have seen that for mystical theology the Second Person 

* Suso, Leben, cap. lvi. 


2 A. E. Waite, ‘‘ The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail,” p. 539. 
3 ‘* The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘‘ Homo,” xix, 


142 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of the Trinity is the Wisdom of the Father, the Word of Life. 
The fullness of this Word could therefore only be communicated 
to the human consciousness by a Life. In the Incarnation this 
Logos, this divine character of Reality, penetrated the illusions 
of the sensual world—in other words, the illusions of all the 
selves whose ideas compose that world—and “saved ” it by this 
infusion of truth. A divine, suffering, self-sacrificing Person- 
ality was then shown as the sacred heart of a living, striving 
universe: and for once the Absolute was exhibited in the 
terms of finite existence. Some such event as this breaking 
through of the divine and archetypal life into the temporal world 
is perceived by the mystical philosopher to bea necessity if man 
was ever to see in terms of life that greatness of life to which 
he belongs: learn to transcend the world of sense, and rebuild 
his life upon the levels of reality. Thus it is that the Catholic 
priest in the Christmas Mass gives thanks, not for the setting 
in hand of any commercial process of redemption, but for a 
revelation of reality, “Quia per incarnati Verbi mysterium, 
nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit: ut dum 
visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem 
rapiamur.” The very essence of mystical Christianity seems 
to be summed up in these lovely words.! 

“The Son of God, the Eternal Word in the Father, who is 
the glance, or brightness, and the power of the light eternity,” 
says Boehme, “must become man and be born in you, if you 
will know God: otherwise you are in the dark stable and go 
about groping.” 2 “The Word,” says Ruysbroeck finely, “is no 
other than See. And this is the coming forth and the birth of 
the Son of the Eternal Light, in Whom all blessedness is seen 
and known.” 3 

Once at any rate, they say in effect, the measure of that 
which it was possible for the Spirit of Life to do and for living 
creatures to be, was filled to the brim. By this event, all 
were assured that the ladder of Creation was made whole; in 


* ‘© Because by the mystery of the Incarnate Word the new light of Thy brightness 
hath shone upon the eyes of our mind: that we, knowing God seen of the eyes, by 
Him may be snatched up into the love of that which eye hath not seen” (Missale 
Romanum. Praefatio Solemnis de Nativitate). 

2 «¢ The Threefold Life of Man,” cap. ill, § 31. 

3 Ruysbroeck, op, céé., 1, iii. cap. i. 


et ee a ee tes mi) 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 143 


this hypostatic union, the breach between appearance and 
reality, between God and man, was healed. The Bridge so 
made—to use St. Catherine of Siena’s allegory again—is 
eternal, since it was “laid before the foundation of the world ” 
‘in the “Eternal Now.” Thus the voice of the Father says 
to her in that vision, “I also wish thee to look at the Bridge 
of My only-begotten Son, and see the greatness thereof, for 
it reaches from Heaven to earth; that is, that the earth of 
your humanity is joined to the greatness of the Deity thereby. 
I say, then, that this Bridge reaches from Heaven to earth, and 
constitutes the union which I have made with man.... So 
the height of the Divinity, humbled to the earth, and joined 
with your humanity, made the Bridge and reformed the road. 
Why was this done? In order that man might come to his 
true happiness with the angels. And observe that it is not 
enough, in order that you should have life, that My Son 
should have made you this Bridge, unless you walk there- 
on.” “Our high Father God Almighty, which is Being,” 
says Lady Julian, “He knew and loved us from afore any time. 
Of which knowing, in His marvellous deep charity, and the 
foreseeing counsel of all the blessed Trinity, He willed that 
the Second Person should become our Mother.” 2 

It is of course this quickening communication of grace 
to nature, of God to man—this claim to an influx of ultimate 
reality, possible of assimilation by all—which constitutes the 
strength of the Christian religion. Instead of the stony diet 
of the philosophers, it offers to the self hungry for the Absolute 
that Panis Angelorum, the vivifying principle of the world. 
That is to say, it gives positive and experimental knowledge 
of and union with a supreme Personality—absorption into His 
mystical body—instead of the artificial conviction produced 
by concentration on an idea. It knits up the universe; shows 
the phenomenal pierced in all directions by the real, and made 
one with it. It provides a solid basis for mysticism: a basis 
which is at once metaphysical and psychological: and shows 
that state towards which the world’s deepest minds have always 
instinctively aspired, as a part of the Cosmic return through 
Christ to God. 

* Dialogo, cap. xxii. 
# “Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. lix, 


144 © AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


**Quivi é la sapienza e la possanza 
. ch’ apri le strade intra il cielo e la terra 
onde fu gia si lunga disianza.”? 


This is what the Christian mystics mean to express when — 
they declare over and over again that the return to the Divine 
Substance, the Absolute, which is the end of the soul’s ascent, 
can only be made through the humanity of Christ. The Son, 
the Word, is the character of the Father: that in which the 
Ineffable Godhead knows Himself, as we only know ourselves 
in our own characters. He is thus a double link : the means of 
God’s self-consciousness, the means of man’s consciousness of 
God. How then, asks mystic theology, could such a link 
complete its attachments without some such process as that 
which the Incarnation dramatized in time and space? The 
Principle of Life is also the Principle of Restitution; by 
which the imperfect and broken life of sense is mended and 
transformed into the perfect life of spirit. Hence the title of 
Repairer applied by Boehme and Saint-Martin to the Second 
Person of the Trinity. 

In the last resort, the doctrine of the Incarnation is the © 
only safeguard of the mystics against the pantheism to which 
they always tend. The Unconditioned Absolute, so soon as 
it alone becomes the object of their contemplation, is apt to be 
conceived merely as Divine Essence; the idea of Personality 
evaporates and loving communion is at an end. This is 
probably the reason why so many of the greatest contem- 
platives—Suso and St. Teresa are cases in point—have found 
that deliberate meditation upon the humanity of Christ, 
- difficult and uncongenial as is: this concrete devotion to the 
. mystical temperament, was a necessity if they were to retain 
a healthy and well-balanced inner life. 

Further, these mystics see in the historic life of Christ 
an epitome—or if you will, an exhibition—of the essentials 
of all spiritual life. There they see dramatized not only the ~ 
Cosmic process of the Divine Wisdom, but also the inward 
experience of every soul on her way to union with that 
Absolute “to which the whole Creation moves.” This is why 


* Par. xxxiii. 37. ‘‘ Here is the Wisdom and the Power which opened the 
ways betwixt heaven and earth, for which there erst had been so long a yearning.” 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 145 


the expressions which they use to describe the evolution of 
the mystical consciousness from the birth of the divine in the 
spark of the soul to its final unification with the Absolute 
Life are so constantly chosen from the Drama of Faith. In 
this drama they see described under veils the supreme and 
necessary adventures of the spirit. Its obscure and humble 
birth, its education in poverty, its temptation, mortification, and 
solitude, its “illuminated life” of service and contemplation, the 
desolation of that “dark night of the soul” in which it seems 
abandoned by the Divine: the painful death of the self, its 
resurrection to the glorified existence of the Unitive Way, its 
final reabsorption in its Source—all these, they say, were lived 
once in a supreme degree in the flesh. Moreover, the degree 

of closeness with which the individual experience adheres — 
to this Pattern is always taken by them as a standard 
of the healthiness, ardour, and success of its transcendental — 
activities, 


** Apparve in questa forma 
Per dare a noi la norma.” 


sang Jacopone da Todi. “And he who vainly thinketh other- 
wise,’ says the “Theologia Germanica” with uncompromising 
vigour, “is deceived. And he who saith otherwise, lieth.” 1 
Those to whom such a parallel seems artificial to the last 
degree should remember that according to the doctrine of 
mysticism that drama of the self-limitation and self-sacrifice. 
of the Absolute Life, which was orice played out in the pheno- © 
menal world—forced, as it were, upon the consciousness of 
dim-eyed men—is eternally going forward upon the plane of - 
reality. To them the Cross of Calvary is implicit in the Rose 
of the World. The law of this Infinite Life, which was in 
the Incarnation expressing Its own nature to a supreme degree, ° 
must then also be the law of the finite life ; in so far as that life 
aspires to transcend individual limitations, rise to freedom, 


and attain union with Infinity. It is this governing idea which 


justifies the apparently fanciful allegorizations of Christian 


history which swarm in the works of the mystics. 


To exhibit these allegorizations in any detail would be 
tedious. All that is necessary is that the principle underlying 


*  Theologia Germanica,”’ cap. xviii. 
L 


{ 


146 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


them should be understood, when anyone can make without 
difficulty the specific attributions. I give, then, but one 
example: that which is referred by mystical writers to the 
Nativity, and concerns the eternal Birth or Generation of the 
Son or Divine Word. 

This Birth is in its first, or Cosmic sense, the welling forth 
of the Spirit of Life from the Divine Abyss of the unconditioned 
Godhead. “From our proper Source, that is to say, from the 


Father and all that which lives in Him, there shines,” says Ruys- | 


_broeck, “an eternal Ray, the which is the Birth of the Son.”! 
It is of this perpetual generation of the Word that Meister 
Eckhart speaks, when he says in his Christmas sermon, “ We 
are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God 
the Father has borne and ever ceases to bear in all Eternity: 
‘whilst this birth also comes to pass in Time and in human 
nature. Saint Augustine says this Birth is ever taking place.’ 
At this point, with that strong practical instinct which is 
characteristic of the mystics, Eckhart turns abruptly from 
speculation to immediate experience, and continues, “ But if it 
takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, 
that it should take place in me.” 2 

Here in a few words the two-fold character of this Mystic 
Birth is exhibited. The interest is suddenly deflected from its 
Cosmic to its personal aspect; and the individual is reminded 
that in him, no less than in the Archetypal Universe, real life 


must be born if real life is to be lived. “When the soul brings” 


forth the Son,” he says in another place, “it is happier than 
Mary.” 3 
Since the soul, according to mystic principles, can only 


perceive Reality in proportion as she is real, know God by 
becoming God-like, it is clear that this birth is the initial 


* “T’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. iii. cap. v. The extreme antiquity 
of this idea is illustrated by the Catholic practice, dating from Patristic times, of ~ 
celebrating three Masses on Christmas Day. Of these the first, at midnight, com- — 
memorates the Eternal Generation of the Son; the second, at dawn, His incarnation — 
upon earth; the third His birth in the heart of man. See Kellner, ‘‘ Heortology” — 


(English translation, London, 1908), p. 156. 


2 Eckhart, Pred. i., ‘‘ Mystische Schriften,” p. 13. Compare Tauler, Sermon — 


on the Nativity of Our Lady (‘‘ The Inner Way,” p. 167). 


4 


3 This idea of re-birth is probably of Oriental origin. It can be traced back om 


Egypt, being found in the Hermetic writings of the third century B.c. See Petrie, — 


‘** Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity,” p. 167. 





ad 


MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGY 147 


necessity. The true and definitely directed mystical life does 
and must open with that most actual and stupendous, though 
indescribable phenomenon, the coming forth into consciousness 
of man’s deeper, spiritual self, which ascetical and mystical 
writers of all ages have agreed to call Regeneration or Re-birth. 

We have already considered! the New Birth in its purely 
psychological aspect, as the emergence of the transcendental 
sense. Hereits more profound and mystical side is exhibited, its 
divine character revealed. By a process which may indifferently 
be described as the birth of something new or the coming forth 
of something which has slept—since both these phrases are but 
metaphors for another and more secret thing—the eye is 
opened on Eternity; the self, abruptly made aware of Reality, 
comes forth from the cave of illusion like a child from the womb 


and begins to live upon the supersensual plane. Then she 


feels in her inmost part a new presence, a new consciousness— 
it were hardly an exaggeration to say a new Person—weak, 
demanding nurture, clearly destined to pass through many 
phases of development before its maturity is reached ; yet of so 
strange a nature, that in comparison with its environment she 
may well regard it as Divine. 

“This change, this upsetting, is called re-birth. Zo be born 
simply means to enter into a world in which the senses dominate, 


\ 


in which wisdom and love languish in the bonds of individuality. . 


To be ve-Gorn means to return to a world where the spirit 
of wisdom and love governs and animal-man obeys.”? So 
Eckartshausen. It means, says Jane Lead, “the bringing forth 
of a new-created Godlike similitude in the soul.”3 This “God- 
like similitude,’ or New Man, is described by Saint-Martin as 
“born in the midst of humiliations, his whole history being that 
of God suffering within us.’4 He is brought forth, says 


~ Eckartshausen again, in the stable previously inhabited by the 


ox of passion and the ass of prejudice.5 His mother, says 
Boehme, is the Virgin Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, or Mirror 
of the Being of God. With the emergence of this new 
and sublime factor into the conscious field—this spiritual birth 


* Supra, p. 63. 2 “The Cloud upon the Sanctuary,” p. 77, 
3 The Enochian Walks with God,” p. 3. 

4 A. E. Waite, ‘* Louis Claude de Saint-Martin,” p. 263. 

5 Op. ctt., p. 81. 


148 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


—the mystic life begins: as the Christian epoch began with the 
emergence of Divine Spirit in the flesh. Paradise, says Boehme, 
is still in the world, but man is notin Paradise unless he be born 
again. In that case, he stands therein in the New Birth: He 
has been lifted, as Eucken would say, to the “spiritual level,” 
and there finds Paradise, the Independent Spiritual Life “not 
alien but his own.” 2 

Here then are one or two characteristics of the map which 


_we shall find the Christian mystics most inclined to use. 


There are, of course, other great landmarks upon it: and these 
we shall meet as we follow in detail the voyages of the questing 
soul. One warning, however, must be given to amateur 
geographers before we go on. Like all other maps, this one at 
its best can but represent by harsh outline and conventional 
colour the living earth which those travellers have trod. It isa 
deliberately schematic representation of Reality, a flat and 
sometimes arid symbol of great landscapes, rushing rivers, 
awful peaks: dangerous unless these its limitations be always 
kept in mind. The boy who defined Canada as “very pink” 
was not much further off the track than those who would limit 
the Adorable Trinity to the definitions of the “ Athanasian ” 
Creed ; however useful that chart may be, and is, within the 
boundaries imposed by its form. 

Further, all such maps, and we who treat of them, can but 
set down in cold blood and with a dreadful pretence of precision, 
matters which the true explorers of Eternity were only able to 
apprehend in the ardours of such a passion, in the transports of 
such a union as we, poor finite slaves of our frittered emotions, 
could hardly look upon and live. “If you would truly know 
how these things come to pass,” says St. Bonaventura, in a 
passage which all students of theology should ever keep in 
mind, “ask it of grace, not of doctrine; of desire, not of 
intellect ; of the ardours of prayer, not of the teachings of the 
schools ; of the Bridegroom, not of the Master; of God, not 
of man ; of the darkness, not of the day ; not of illumination, 
but of that Fire which enflames all and wraps us in God 
with great sweetness and most ardent love. The which Fire 
most truly is God, and the hearth thereof is in Jerusalem.” 3 


* “De Signatura Rerum,” viii. 47. ? ‘‘ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. go. 
3 “ De Itinerario Mentis in Deo,”’ cap. vii. 


CHAPTER VI 
MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 


Mystical Symbols—Their use and necessity—Their immense variety—Three 
groups of Symbols—(1) Divine Transcendence and the idea of pilgrimage—(2) Mutual 
Desire and symbols of love—(3) Divine Immanence, and Symbols of transmutation— 
(r) Symbols of Pilgrimage—The Siifi Pilgrim—The Seven Valleys of ’Attar—Dante 
—(z) Mutual Desire—‘‘ The Hymn of Jesus”—‘‘ The Hound of Heaven ”’—The 
‘*Following Love”—Symbols of Love—the ‘‘ Spiritual Marriage ’’—St. Bernard— 
St. Teresa—Richard of St. Victor’s Four Degrees of Ardent Love—(3) Symbols of 
Transmutation—The Spiritual Alchemists—The Philosopher’s Stone—The material o1 
Alchemy—Jacob Boehme—‘“‘ Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury ’”’—the Mystical transmuta- 
tion—the Maguum Opus—‘* Hunting the Greene Lyon ”—The Red Dragon 


adopting, as chart and pilot book of his voyages and 

adventures, the scheme of faith, and diagram of the 
spiritual world, which is adopted by ordinary Christian men. 
We saw that he found in ita depth and richness of content which 
the conventional believer in that theology, the “good church- 
man,” seldom suspects: and that which is here true of the 
Christian mystic, is true, as regards their respective theologies, of 
the Pagan, the Mahommedan and the Buddhist as well. 

But, since the spiritual adventures of the mystic are not 
those of ordinary men, it will follow that this map, though ~ 
always true for him, is not complete. He can press forward to 
countries which unmystical piety must mark as unexplored. 
Pushing out from harbour to “the vast and _ stormy sea 
of the divine,’ he can take soundings, and mark dangers the 
existence of which such piety never needs to prove. | 

Hence it is not strange that certain maps, artistic representa- , 
tions or symbolic schemes, should have come into being which ° 
describe or suggest the special experiences of the mystical 
consciousness, and the doctrines to which these experiences 


have given birth. Many of these maps have an uncouth, even 
149 | 


T our study of theology we saw the Christian mystic 


150 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


an impious appearance in the eyes of those unacquainted with 
the facts which they attempt to translate: as the charts of the 
deep-sea sailor seem ugly and unintelligible things to those who 
have never been out of sight of land. Others—and these the 
most pleasing, most easily understood—have already been made 
familiar, perhaps tiresomely familiar, to us by the poets; who, 
intuitively recognizing their suggestive qualities, their links with 
truth, have borrowed and adapted them to their own business 
of translating Reality into terms of rhythm and_ speech. 
Ultimately, however, they owe their origin to the mystics, 
or to that mystical sense which is innate in all true poets: 
and in the last resort it is the mystic’s kingdom, and the 
mystic’s experience, which they affect to describe. 

Now these special mystical diagrams, these symbolic and 
artistic descriptions of man’s inward history—his secret adven- 
tures with God—are almost endless in their variety: since in 
each we have a picture of the country of the soul seen through 
a different temperament. To describe all would be to analyse 
the whole field of mystical literature, and indeed much other 
literature as well; to epitomize in fact all that has been dreamed 
and written concerning the so-called “ inner life”—a dreary and 
a lengthy task. But the majority of them, I think, tend to 
express a comparatively small number of essential doctrines 
or fundamental ways of seeing things; and as regards their 
imagery, these fall into three great classes; representative of 
the three principal ways in which man’s spiritual consciousness 
reacts to the touch of Reality, the three primary if paradoxical 
facts of which that consciousness must be aware. Hence a 
consideration of mystic symbols drawn from each of these 


groups may give us a key with which to unlock some at | 


least of the verbal riddles of the individual adventurer. 
Thanks to the spatial imagery inseparable from human 
thinking and human expression, no direct description of 
spiritual experience is or can be possible to man. It must 
always be symbolic, allusive, oblique: always suggest, but 
never tell, the truth: and in this respect there is not much 
to choose between the fluid and artistic language of vision 
and the arid technicalities of philosophy. In another respect, 
however, there is a great deal to choose between them: and 
here the visionary, not the philosopher, receives the palm. 


_ 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM | 151 


The greater the suggestive quality of the symbol used, the 
more answering emotion it evokes in those to whom it is 
addressed, the more truth it will convey. A good symbolism, 
therefore, will be more than mere diagram or mere allegory: it 
will use to the utmost the resources of beauty and of passion, 
will bring with it hints of mystery and wonder, bewitch with 
dreamy periods the mind to which it is addressed. Its 
appeal will not be to the clever brain, but to the desirous heart, 


the intuitive sense, of man. 
The three great classes of symbols which I propose to 


consider, play upon three deep cravings of the self, three great 
expressions of man’s restlessness, which only mystic truth can 
fully satisfy. The first is the craving which make him a pilgrim 
and wanderer. It is the longing to go out from his normal 
world in search of a lost home, a “better country”; an 
Eldorado, a Sarras, a Heavenly Syon. The next is that 
craving of heart for heart, of the soul for its perfect mate, 
which makes him a lover. The third is the craving for inward 
purity and perfection, which makes him an ascetic, and in the 
last resort a saint. 

These three cravings, I think, answer to three ways in which 
mystics of different temperaments attack the problem of the 
Absolute: three different formulz under which their transcen- 
dence of the sense-world can be described. In describing this 
transcendence, and the special adventures involved in it, they 
are describing a change from the state of ordinary men, in 
touch with the sense-world, responding to its rhythms, to the 
state of spiritual consciousness in which, as they say, they are 
“in union” with Divine Reality, with God. Whatever be the 
theological creed of the mystic, he never varies in declaring 
this close, definite, and actual intimacy to be the end of his 
quest. ‘“ Mark me like the tulip with Thine own streaks,” says 
the Sifi.t “I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his 
own hand is to a man,” says the German contemplative? “My 
me is God, nor do I know my selfhood save in Him,” says the 
Italian saint. 3 

But, since this Absolute God is for him substance, ground or 


* Jdmi, ‘‘ Joseph and Zulaikha. The Poet’s Prayer.” 
2 ** Theologia Germanica,” cap. x. 
3 St. Catherine of Genoa, Vita e Dottrina, cap. xiv, 


152 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


underlying Reality of all that zs: present yet absent, near 
yet far: He is as truly immanent in the human Soul as in 
the Universe. The seeker for the Real may therefore ob- 
jectify his quest in two apparently contradictory, yet really 
mutually explanatory ways. First he may see it as an out- 
going journey from the world of illusion to the real or 
transcendental world: a leaving of the visible for the invisible. 
Secondly, it may appear to him as an inward alteration, re- 
making or regeneration, by which his personality or character 
is so changed as to be able to enter into communion with that 
Fontal Being which he loves and desires; is united with and 
dominated by the indwelling God who is the fount of its spiritual 
life. In the first case, the objective idea “ God” is the pivot of 
his symbolism: the Blazing Star, or Magnet of the Universe 
which he has seen far off: and seeing, has worshipped and 
desired. In the second case, this is replaced by the subjective 
idea “Sanctity,’ with its accompanying consciousness of a 
disharmony to be abolished. The Mystic Way will then be 
described, not as a journey, but as an alteration of personality, 
the transmuting of “earthly” into “heavenly” man. Plainly 
these two aspects are obverse and reverse of one whole. They 
represent that mighty pair of opposites, Infinite and Finite, 
God and Self, which it is the business of mysticism to carry 
up into a higher synthesis. 

Whether the process be considered as outward search or 
inward change, its object and its end are the same. Man 
enters into the order of Reality: his desire is met by the 
Divine Desire, his “separated will” or life becomes one with 
the great Life of the All. 

From what has been said in the last chapter, it will be clear 
that the two opposing types of symbolism which we have 
discussed—the outward search and inward change—will be 
adopted by the two groups of selves whose experience of 
“union with the Divine” leans (1) to the Transcendent or ex- 
ternal, (2) to the Immanent or internal way of apprehending 
Reality: and that a third or intermediate group of images 
will be necessary to express the experience of those to whom 
mystic feeling—the satisfaction of love—is the supreme factor 
inthe mystic life. According, then, to whether man’s instinct 
prompts him to describe the Absolute Reality which he knows 


wo 


fi 
i 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 153 


as a Place, a Person, or a State—all three of course but partial 
and human symbols of the one Indescribable Truth—so will 
he tend to adopt a symbolism of one or other of these 
three types. 

A. Those who conceive the Perfect as a beatific vision 
exterior to them and very far off, who find in the doctrine 
of Emanations something which answers to their inward ex- 
perience, will feel the process of their entrance into reality to 
be a quest, an arduous journey from the material to the spiritual 
world. They move away from, rather than transmute to 
another form, the life of sense. The ecstasies of such mystics 
will answer to the root-meaning of that much perverted word, 
as a “standing out” from themselves; a flight to happier 
countries far away. For them, the soul is outward bound 
towards its home. 

B. Those for whom mysticism is above all things an in- 
timate and personal relation, the satisfaction of a deep desire— 
who can say with Gertrude More, “ never was there or can there 
be imagined such a love, as is between an humble soul and 
Thee ”—will fall back upon imagery drawn largely from the 
language of earthly passion. Since the Christian religion insists 
upon the personal aspect of the Godhead, and provides in Christ 
an object of such intimacy, devotion and desire, an enormous 
number of Christian mystics necessarily use symbols of this 
kind. 

C. Those who are conscious rather of the Divine as a Tran- 
scendent Life immanent in the world and the self, and of a 
strange spiritual seed within them by whose development man, 
moving to higher levels of character and consciousness, attains 
his end, will see the mystic life as involving inward change 
rather than outgoing search. Regeneration is their watchword, 
and they will choose symbols of growth or transmutation: 
saying with St. Catherine of Genoa, “my Being is God, not 
by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my 
Being.” = 

These three groups of mystics, then, stand for three kinds ot 
temperament ; and we may fairly take as their characteristic 
forms of symbolic expression the Mystic Quest, the Marriage 
of the Soul and the “Great Work” of the Spiritual Alchemists, 


* Vita e Dottrina, p. 36. 


154 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


I 


The pilgrimage idea, the outgoing quest, appears in mysti- 
cal literature under two rather different aspects. One is the 
search for the “ Hidden Treasure which desires to be found.” 
Such is the “quest of the Grail” when regarded in its mystic 
aspect as an allegory of the adventures of the soul. The 
other is the long, hard journey towards a known and definite 
goal or state. Such is Dante’s “Divine Comedy”; which is, 
in one of its aspects, a faithful and detailed description of 
the Mystic Way. The goal of such a quest—the Empyrean of 
Dante, the Beatific Vision or fulfilment of love—is often called 
Jerusalem by the Christian Mystics; naturally enough, since 
that city was for the mediaeval mind the supreme end of 
pilgrimage. By Jerusalem they mean not only the celestial 
country, Heaven: but also the spiritual life, which is “itself a _ 
heaven.” “Just as a true pilgrim going towards Jerusalem,” 
says Hilton, “leaveth behind him house and land, wife and 
children, and maketh himself poor and bare from all things 
that he hath, that he may go lightly without letting. Right so, 
if thou wilt be a spiritual pilgrim, thou shalt strip thyself naked 
of all that thou hast ... then shalt thou resolve in thy heart 
fully and wholly that thou wilt be at Jerusalem, and at no other 
place but there.” “Jerusalem,” he says in this same chapter, “is 
as much as to say a sight of peace; and betokeneth contempla- 
tion in perfect love of God.”2 

Under this image of a pilgrimage—an image as concrete and 
practical, as remote from the romantic and picturesque, for the 
mediaeval writers who used it, as a symbolism of hotel and 
' railway train would be to us—the mystics contrived to 
summarize and suggest much of the life history of the ascend- 
ing soul; the developing spiritual consciousness. The neces- 
sary freedom and detachment of the traveller, his departure 
from his normal life and interests, the difficulties, enemies, and 
hardships encountered on the road ; the length of the journey _ 
the variety of the country, the dark night which overtakes him, 
the glimpses of destination far away—all these are seen more 


This image seems first to have been elaborated by St. Augustine, from whom it 
was borrowed by Hugh of St. Victor, and most of the mediaeval mystics, 
2 The Scale of Perfection,’’ bk. ii. pt. ii. cap. iii. 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 155 


and more as we advance in knowledge to constitute a trans- 
parent allegory of the incidents of man’s progress from the 
unreal to the real. Bunyan was but the last and least mystical 
of a long series of minds which grasped this fact. 

The Traveller, says the Sufi ’Aziz bin Mahommed Nafasi, 
in whose book, “ The Remotest Aim,” the pilgrimage-symbolism 
is developed in great detail, is the Perceptive or Intuitive Sense 
of Man. The goal to which he journeys is Knowledge of God. 
This mysterious traveller towards the only country of the soul 
may be known of other men by his detachment, charity, 
humility, and patience. These primary virtues, however— 
belonging to ethical rather than to spiritual life—are not 
enough to bring his quest to a successful termination. They 
make him, say the Siifis, “ perfect in knowledge of his goal but 
deficient in the power of reaching it.” Though he has fraternal 
love for his fellow-pilgrims, detachment from wayside allure- 
ments, tireless perseverance on the road, he is still encumbered 
and weakened by unnecessary luggage. The second stage of 
his journey, therefore, is initiated like that of Christian by a 
casting off of his burden: a total self-renouncement, the attain- 
ment of a Franciscan poverty of spirit whereby he becomes 
“Perfectly Free.” 

Having got rid of all impediments to the spiritual quest, he 
must now acquire or develop in their stead the characteristic mys- 
tical qualities, or Three Aids of the Pilgrim ; which are called in 
this system Attraction, Devotion, and Elevation. Attraction is 
‘consciousness of the mutual desire existing between man’s 
spirit and the Divine Spirit : of the link of love which knits up 
reality and draws all things to their home in God. This is 
the universal law on which all mysticism is based. It is St. 
Augustine’s “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts 
can find no rest outside of Thee.” This “natural magnetism,” 
then, once he is aware of it, will draw the pilgrim irresistibly 
along the road from the Many to the One. His second aid, 
Devotion, says the “ Remotest Aim” in a phrase of great depth 
and beauty, is “the prosecution of the journey ¢o God and zx 
God.” It embraces, in fact, the whole contemplative life. It 


* So too Ruysbroeck says that ‘‘ the just man goes towards God by inward love 
in perpetual activity and z# God in virtue of his fruitive affection in eternal rest ” 
(‘‘ L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. ii. cap. Ixxiii.), 


156 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


is the next degree of spiritual consciousness after the blind 
yielding to the attraction of the Real, and the setting in. order 
of man’s relation to his source. 

The Traveller’s journey ¢o God is complete when he 
attains knowledge of Him—“ Illumination,” in the language 
of European mystics. The point at which this is attained is 
called the Tavern, or resting-place upon the road, where he 
is fed with the Divine Mysteries. There are also “Wine 
Shops” upon the way, where the weary pilgrim is cheered and 
refreshed by a draught of the wine of Divine Love Only 
when the journey fo God is completed begins the “ Journey zw 
God ”—that which the Christian mystics call the Unitive Way— 
and this, since it is the essence of Eternal Life, can have no end. 
Elevation, the pilgrim’s third aid, is the exalted or ecstatic form 
of consciousness peculiar to the contemplative, and which allows 
the traveller to see the spiritual city towards which he goes.? 

The Sufi poet ’Attar, in his mystical poem, “The Colloquy 
of the Birds,” has described the stages of this same spiritual 
pilgrimage with greater psychological insight, as the journey 
through “Seven Valleys.” The lapwing, having been asked by 
other birds what is the length of the road which leads to the 
hidden Palace of the King, replies that there are Seven Valleys 
through which every traveller must pass: but since none who 
attain the End ever come back to describe their adventures, no 
one knows the length of the way. 

(1) The first valley, says the lapwing, is the Valley of the 
Quest. It is long and toilsome: and there the traveller must 
strip himself of all earthly things, becoming poor, bare, and 
desolate: and so stay till the Supernal Light casts a ray on his 
desolation. It is, in fact, Dante’s Purgatorio, the Christian Way 
of Purgation: the period of self-stripping and purification which 
no mystic system omits. 

(2) When the ray of Supernal Light has touched the pilgrim 
he enters the limitless Valley of Love: begins, that is to say, the 
mystic life. It is Dante’s “ Earthly Paradise,” or, in the tradi- 
tional system of the mystics, the onset of illumination. 


* I need not remind the reader o. the fact that this symbolism, perverted to the 
purposes of his sceptical philosophy, runs through the whole of the Rubaiyat of Omar 
Khayyam. 


2 eee 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 157 


(3) Hence he passes to the Valley of Knowledge or En- 
lightenment—the contemplative state—where each finds in 
‘communion with Truth the place that belongs to him. No 
‘Dante student will fail to see here a striking parallel with those 
planetary heavens where each soul partakes of the Divine, “not 
‘supremely in the absolute sense,” as St. Bonaventura has it, but 
“supremely in respect of Azmself.”’ The mystery of Being is 
‘now revealed to the traveller. He sees Nature’s secret, and 
God in all things: It is the height of illumination. 
(4) The next stage is the Valley of Detachment, of utter 
absorption in Divine Love—the Stellar Heaven of the Saints— 
where Duty is seen to be all in all. This leads to— 
(5) The Valley of the Unity, where the naked Godhead is 
the one object of contemplation. This is the stage of ecstasy, or 
the Beatific Vision: Dante’s condition.in the last canto of 
the “Paradiso.” It is transient, however, and leads to— 
(6) The Valley of Amazement; where the Vision, far trans- 
cending the pilgrim’s receptive power, appears to be taken from 
him and he is plunged in darkness and bewilderment. This is 
the state which Dionysius the Areopagite, and after him many 
“mediaeval mystics, called the Divine Dark, and described as the 
truest and closest of all our apprehensions of the Godhead. It 
is the Cloud of Unknowing: “dark from excessive bright.” The 
final stage is— 
(7) The Valley of Annihilation of Self: the supreme degree 
of union or theopathetic state, in which the self is utterly 
merged “like a fish in the sea” in the ocean of Divine Love. 
Through all these metaphors of pilgrimage to a goal—ofa 
road followed, distance overpassed, fatigue endured—there runs 
the definite idea that the travelling self in undertaking the 
journey is fulfilling a destiny, a law of the transcendental life ; 
obeying an imperative need. The chosen Knights are destined 
or called to the quest of the Grail. “All men are cad/ed to their 

origin,” says Rulman Merswin, and the fishes which he sees in 
his Vision of Nine Rocks are impelled to struggle as it were 
“against nature” uphill from pool to pool towards their source.? 











: t ’Attar’s allegory of the Valleys will be found epitomised in Mr. W. S. Lilly’s 

excellent account of the Siifi poets, in ‘“‘ Many Mansions,” p. 130; and in a fuller 

| form in ‘*The Porch” Series, No. 8. 
2 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,” p. 27. 


158 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


All mystical thinkers agree in declaring that there is a 
mutual attraction between the Spark of the Soul, the free divine 
germ in man, and the Fount from which it came forth. “We 
long for the Absolute,” says Royce, “only in so far as in us the 
Absolute also longs, and seeks, through our very temporal 
striving, the peace that is nowhere in Time, but only, and yet 
Absolutely, in Eternity.” So, many centuries before the birth 
of American philosophy, Hilton put the same truth of ex- 


perience in lovelier words. “ He it is that desireth in thee, and © 


He it is that is desired. He is all and He doth all if thou couldst 
see Him.’’2 
The homeward journey of man’s spirit, then, is due to the 


push of a divine life within answering to the pull of a divine 


life without.3 It is the going of like to like, the fulfilment of 


a Cosmic necessity: and the mystics, in undertaking it, are — 
humanity’s pioneers on the only road to rest. Hence that 
attraction which the Moslem mystic discerned as the traveller’s © 


necessary aid, is a fundamental doctrine of all mysticism: and 


as a consequence, the symbolism of mutual desire is here inex-_ 


tricably mingled with that of pilgrimage. The spiritual pilgrim 


goes because he is called ; because he wants to go, must go, if © 
he is to find rest and peace. “God meeds man,” says Eckhart. — 
It is Love calling to love: and the journey, though in one sense 


a hard pilgrimage, up and out, by the terraced mount and the 


ten heavens to God, in another is the inevitable rush of the 


roving comet, caught at last, to the Central Sun. “My weight 
is my love,” said St. Augustine Like gravitation, it inevitably 
compels, for good or evil, every spirit to its own place. Ac- 
cording to another range of symbols, that love flings open a 
door, in order that the Larger Life may rush in, and it and the 
soul be “one thing.” 


* Royce, ‘‘ The World and the Individual,” vol. ii. p. 386. 
2 «¢The Scale of Perfection,” bk. ii, pt. ii. cap. v. 


3 Compare Reécéjac (‘‘Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 252). 


‘¢ According to mysticism, morality leads the soul to the frontiers of the Absolute and 
even gives it an impulsion to enter, but this is not enough. This movement of pure 
Freedom cannot succeed unless there is an equivalent movement within the Absolute 
itself.” 

4 Aug. Cont., bk. xiii. cap.9. ‘‘ All those who love,” says Ruysbroeck, feel this 
attraction ; more or less according to the degree of their love.”” (‘* De Calculo sive de 
Perfectione filiorum Dei.” Quoted by Maeterlinck, introduction to ‘‘ L’Ornement des 
Noces Spirituelles,” p. lvi.) 


: 


| 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 159 


Here, then, we run through the whole gamut of symbolic 
expression; through Transcendence, Desire, and Immanence. 
All are seen to point to one consummation, diversely and 
allusively expressed: the imperative need of union between 
man’s separated spirit and the Real, his remaking in the 
interests of transcendent life, his establishment in that Kingdom 
which is both “ near and far.” 

“In the book of Hidden Things it is written,” says 
Eckhart, “‘I stand at the door and knock and wait’ 
thou needst not seek Him here or there: He is no farther 
off than the door of the heart. There He stands and waits 
and waits until He finds thee ready to open and let Him 
in. Thou needst not call Him from a distance; to wait 
until thou openest is harder for Him than for thee. He needs 
thee a thousand times more than thou canst need Him. Thy 
opening and Hts entering are but one moment.”* “God,” he says 
in another place, “can as little do without us, as we without 
Him.”2 Our attainment of the Absolute is not a one-sided 
ambition, but a mutual necessity. “ For our natural Will,” says 
Lady Julian, “is to have God, and the Good will of God is to 
have us; and we may never cease from longing till we have Him 
in fullness of joy.” 3 

So, in the beautiful poem or ritual called the “Hymn of 
Jesus,” contained in the apocryphal ‘“ Acts of John” and dating 
from primitive Christian times, the Logos, or Eternal Christ, 
is thus represented as matching with His own transcendent 
self-giving desire every need of the soul who stands with Him 
in the mystical circle of initiation.4 

The Soul says :-— 


***T would be saved.’” 
Christ replies :— 


*** And I would save.” Amen.” 
The Dialogue continues :— 


*©¢¥ would be loosed.’ 
‘And I would loose.’ Amen. 


* Meister Eckhart, Pred. iii. 2 Jbid., Pred. xiii. 

3 “ Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. vi. 

4 The Greek and English text will be found in the ‘*‘ Apocrypha Anecdota”’ of 
Dr. M. R. James, series 2 (Cambridge, 1897), pp. 1-25. I follow his ranslation. 
It will be seen that I have adopted the hypothesis of Mr. G. R. S. Mead as to the 
dramatic nature of this poem. See his *‘ Echoes from the Gnosis,’ 1896. 


a —— 


160 AN INTRODUCTION TO: MYSTICISM 


‘I would be pierced.’ 

‘And I would pierce.’ Amen. 

‘I would be born.’ 

‘And I would bear.’ Amen. 

‘I would eat.’ 

‘And I would be eaten.’ Amen. 
*I would hear.’ 

‘And I would be heard.’ Amen.’ 


a * * * © 


***T am a Lamp to thee who beholdest Me, 
I am a Mirror to thee who perceivest Me, 
I am a Door to thee, who knockest at Me, 
I am a Way to thee a wayfarer.’”’ 


The same fundamental idea of the mutual quest of the Soul 
and the Absolute is expressed in the terms of another symbolism 
by the great Mahommedan mystic :— 


‘No lover ever seeks union with his beloved, 
But his beloved is also seeking union with him. 
But the lover’s love makes his body lean 
While the beloved’s love makes her fair and lusty. 
When in ¢hzs heart the lightning spark of love arises, 
Be sure this love is reciprocated in ¢hat heart. 
When the love of God arises in thy heart, 
Without doubt God also feels love for thee.” ! 


The mystic vision, then, is of a spiritual universe held tight 
within the bonds of love:? and of the free and restless human 
soul, having within it the spark of divine desire, the “tendency 
to the Absolute,” only finding satisfaction and true life when 
united with this Life of God. Then, in Patmore’s lovely image, 
“the babe is at its mother’s breast,” “the lover has returned to 
the beloved.” 3 

Whatever their outward sense, the mystic symbols one and 
all express aspects of this “secret of the world,” this primal 

t Jalalu ’d Din (Wisdom of the East Series), p. 77. 
? So Dante— 


‘*Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna 
legato con amore in un volume 
cio che per Il’universo si squaderna.”’ 
(Par. xxxiii. 85.) 


8 “The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,”’ ‘‘ Aurea Dicta,’’ ccxxviii. 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 161 


verity. But whereas such great visionary schemes as those of 
"Attar and of Dante show it in its Cosmic form, in many other 
symbols—particularly those which we meet in the writings of 
the ecstatic saints—the personal subjective note, the conscious- 
ness of an individual relation between that one self and the 
Supernal Self, overpowers all such general applications. Then 
philosophy and formal allegory must step aside : the sacramental 
language of exalted emotion, of profoundly felt experience, 
takes its place. The phases of mutual love, of wooing and 
combat, awe and delight—the fevers of desire, the ecstasy of 
surrender—are drawn upon. “All this lovely dalliance of 
private conference,” in Hilton’s words,t is made to contribute 
something to the description of the great and secret drama of 
the soul. 

To such symbolic transcripts of intimate experience belongs 
one amazing episode of the spiritual life-history which, because 
it has been given immortal expression by the greatest mystical 
poet of modern times, is familiar to thousands of readers who 
know little or nothing of the more normal adventures incidental 
to man’s attainment of the Absolute. In “The Hound of 
Heaven” Francis Thompson described with an almost terrible 
power, not the self’s quest of adored Reality, but Reality’s quest 
of the unwilling self. He shows to us the remorseless, tireless 
seeking and following of the soul by the Divine Life to which 
it will not surrender: the inexorable onward sweep of “ this 
tremendous Lover,’ hunting the separated spirit, “strange 
piteous futile thing” that flees Him “down the nights and down 
the days.” This idea of the love-chase, of the spirit rushing in 
terror from the overpowering presence of God, but followed, 
sought, conquered in the end, is common to all the mediaeval 
mystics: it is the obverse of their general doctrine of the 
necessary fusion of human and divine life, “escape from the 
flame of separation.” 

“T chased thee, for in this was my pleasure,” says the voice 
of Love to Mechthild of Magdeburg; “I captured thee, for this 

‘was my desire; I bound thee, and I rejoice in thy bonds; I 
‘have wounded thee, that thou mayst be united to me. If I 
‘gave thee blows, it was that I might be possessed of thee.”? 


* «The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. xv. 
2 «‘ Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,”’ pt. i. cap. iii. 





162 AN. INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


So in the beautiful Middle English poem of “ Quia amore 
langueo,’— 
**T am true love that fals was nevere, 
Mi sistyr, mannis soule, I loved hir thuss 
Bicause we wolde in no wise discevere 
I lefte my Kyngdom glorious. 
I purveyde for hir a paleis precious; 
She fleyth, I folowe, I soughte hir so. 
I suftride this peyne piteous 
Quia amore langueo.” * 


Meister Eckhart has the same idea of the inexorable Following 
Love, impossible to escape, expressed under less personal 
images. “Earth,” he says, “cannot escape the sky; let it flee 
up or down, the sky flows into it, and makes it fruitful whether 
it will or no. So God does to man. He who will escape Him 
only runs to His bosom ; for all corners are open to Him.” 2 

All mystics have very strongly this sense of a mysterious 
spiritual life—a Reality—without, seeking man and compelling 
him to Its will. It is not for him, they think, to say that he 
will or will not aspire to the transcendental world.3 Hence - 
sometimes this inversion of man’s long quest of God. The 
self resists the pull of spiritual gravitation, flees from the touch 
of Eternity ; and the Eternal seeks it, tracks it ruthlessly down, 
The Following Love, the mystics say, is a fact of experience, 
not a poetic idea. “ Those strong feet that follow, follow after,” 
once set upon the chase, are bound to win. Man, once conscious” 
of Reality, cannot evade it. For a time his separated spirit, 
his disordered loves, may wilfully frustrate the scheme of 
things: but he must be conquered in the end. Then the mystic 
process unfolds itself inexorably : Love triumphs: the “ purpose 
of the worlds” fulfills itself in the individual life, | 


II 


It was natural and inevitable that the imagery of human 
love and marriage should have seemed to the mystic the best of 


* * Quia amore langueo,” an anonymous fifteenth-century poem. Printed from 
the Lambeth MS. by the E.E.T.S., 1866-67. 

2 Pred. Ixxxviii. 

3 So we are told of St. Francis of Assisi, that in his youth he ‘‘ ¢ried to flee God's 
hand.”” Thomas of Celano, Legenda Prima, cap. ii. 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 163 


all images of his own “ fulfilment of life”; his soul’s surrender, 
first to the call, finally to the embrace of Perfect Love. It lay 
ready to his hand: it was understocd of all men: and, more- 
over, it most certainly does offer, upon lower levels, a strangely 
exact parallel to the sequence of states in which man’s spiritual 
consciousness unfolds itself, and which form the consummation 
_ of the mystic life. 

It has been said that the constant use of such imagery by 
Christian mystics of the mediaeval period is traceable to the 
popularity of the Song of Solomon. I think that the truth lies 
rather in the opposite statement: namely, that the mystic loved 
the Song of Solomon because he there saw reflected, as in a 
mirror, the most secret experiences of his soul. The sense of 
a desire that was insatiable, of a personal fellowship so real, 
inward, and intense that it could only be compared with the 
closest link of human love, of an intercourse that was no mere 
spiritual self-indulgence, but was rooted in the primal duties and 
necessities of life--more, those deepest, most intimate secrets of 
communion, those self-giving ecstasies which all mystics know, 
but of which we, who are not mystics, may not speak—all these 
he found symbolized and suggested, their unendurable glories 
veiled in a merciful mist, in the poetry which man has invented 
to honour that august passion in which the merely human draws 
nearest to the divine. 

The great saints who adopted and elaborated this symbo- 
lism, applying it to their pure and ardent passion for the 
Absolute, were destitute of the prurient imagination which their 
modern commentators too often possess. They were essen- 
tially pure of heart; and when they “saw God” they were so 
far from confusing that unearthly vision with the products of 
morbid sexuality, that the dangerous nature of the imagery 
which they employed did not occur to them. They knew by 
experience the unique nature of spiritual love: and no one can 
know anything about it in any other way. 

Thus for St. Bernard, throughout his deeply mystical sermons 
on the Song of Songs, the Divine Word is the Bridegroom, the 
human soul is the Bride: but how different is the effect pro- 
duced by his use of these symbols from that with which he has 
been charged by hostile critics! In the place of that “sensuous 
imagery ” which is so often and so earnestly deplored by those 


164 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


who have hardly a nodding acquaintance with the writings of 
the saints, we find images which indeed have once been 
sensuous; but which are here anointed and ordained to a holy 
office, carried up, transmuted, and endowed with a radiant 
purity, an intense and spiritual life. 

“<< Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. Who is it 
speaks these words? It is the Bride. Who is the Bride? It 
is the Soul thirsting for God. . . . She who asks this is held by . 
the bond of love to him from whom she asks it. Of all the 
sentiments of nature, this of love is the most excellent, espe- 
cially when it is rendered back to Him who is the principle and 
fountain of it—that is, God. Nor are there found any expres- 
sions equally sweet to signify the mutual affection between the 
Word of God and the soul, as those of Bridegroom and of Bride; 
inasmuch as between individuals who stand in such relation to 
each other all things are in common, and they possess nothing 
separate or divided. They have one inheritance, one dwelling- 
place, one table, and they are in fact one flesh. If, then, 
mutual love is especially befitting to a bride and bridegroom, it 
is not unfitting that the name of Bride is given to a soul which 
loves.” = 

To women mystics of the Catholic Church, familiar with the 
antique and poetic metaphor which called every cloistered nun 
the Bride of Christ, that crisis in their spiritual history in which 
they definitely vowed themselves to the service of Transcendent 
Reality seemed, naturally enough, the veritable betrothal of the 
soul. Often, in a dynamic vision, they saw as in a picture the 
binding vows exchanged between their spirits and their God.? 
That further progress on the mystic way which brought with 
it a sharp and permanent consciousness of union with the 
Divine Will, the constant sustaining presence of a Divine . 
Companion, became, by an extension of the original simile, — 
Spiritual Marriage. The elements of duty, constancy, irre- © 
vocableness, and loving obedience involved in the mediaeval 
conception of the marriage tie, made it an apt image of a 
spiritual state in which humility, intimacy, and love were the 
dominant characteristics. There is really no need to seek a 
pathological explanation of these simple facts. Moreover, the 


t St. Bernard, ‘‘ Cantica Canticorum,’’ Sermon vii. 
* Vide infra, pt. il. cap. v, 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 165 


descriptions of spiritual marriage which the great mystics have 
left are singularly free from physical imagery. ‘AII that I can 
say of it, and all that I understand of it,” says St. Teresa, “is 
that the soul, or rather the Spirit of the Soul [the divine spark, 
or part], becomes one thing with God. That He may show how 
‘much He loves us, God, Who is also spirit, has desired to show 
to certain souls how far this love can go: and this, that we may 
be excited to praise His generosity. Despite His infinite 
Majesty, He condescends to unite Himself so closely to a 
feeble creature, that, like those whom the sacrament of marriage 
has united in an irrevocable bond, He would never again be 
separated from her. After the spiritual betrothal it is not thus: 
more than once the lovers separate. In the spiritual marriage, 
on the contrary, the soul dwells always with God, in that centre 
which I have described.” ! 

The great Richard of St. Victor, in one of his most splendid 
mystical treatises,2 has given us perhaps the most daring and 
detailed application of the symbolism of marriage to the 
adventures of the spirit of man. He divides the “steep 
stairway of love,” by which the contemplative ascends to union 
with the Absolute, into four stages. These he calls the betrothal, 
the marriage, the wedlock, and the fruitfulness of the soul.3 In 
the betrothal, he says, the soul “thirsts for the Beloved”; that 
is to say, it longs to experience the delights of Reality. “The 
Spirit comes to the Soul, and seems sweeter than honey.” It 
is conversion, the awakening to mystical truth ; the kindling of 
the passion for the Absolute. “Then the Soul, with pertinacity 
demands more”: and because of her burning desire she attains 
to pure contemplation, and so passes to the second degree of 
love. In this she is “led in bridal” by the Beloved. Ascend- 
ing “above herself” in contemplation, she “sees the Sun of 
Righteousness.” She is now confirmed in the mystic life; the 
irrevocable marriage vows are made between her spirit and her 
God. At this point she can “see the Beloved,” but “cannot yet 


* « FB] Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sétimas, cap. ii. 
‘De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Uharitatis ” (Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 
cxcvi. col. 1207). 
3 ‘* Tn primo gradu fit desponsatio, in secundo nuptiae, in tertio copula, in quarto 
puerperiuin. . . . De quarto dicitur, Concepimus, et quasi parturivimus et peperimus 
spiritum ”’ (Isa. xviii. 26). (Od. c¢¢., 1216, D.) - 


166 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


come in to Him,” says Richard. This degree, as we shall see 
later, answers more or less to that which other mystics call the 
Illuminative Way: but any attempt to press these poetic 
symbols into a cast-iron series, and establish exact parallels, is 
foredoomed to failure, and will merely succeed in robbing them 
of their fragrance and suggestive power. In Richard’s “ third 
stage,” however, that of union, or wedlock, it is clear that the 
soul enters upon the “ Unitive Way.” She has passed the 
stages of ecstatic and significant events, and is initiated into 
the Life. She is “deified,” “passes utterly zzfo God, and is 
glorified in Him”: is transfigured, he says, by immediate con- 
tact with the Divine Substance, into an utterly different quality 
of being. “Thus,” says St. John of the Cross, “the soul, when 
it shall have driven away from itself all that is contrary to the 
divine will, becomes transformed in God by love.” ! 

“The Soul,” says Richard again, “is utterly concentrated on 
the One.” She is “caught up to the divine light.” The expres- 
sion of the personal passion, the intimate relation, here rises to 
its height. But this is not enough. Where most mystical 
diagrams leave off, Richard of St. Victor’s “Steep stairway of 
Love” goes on: with the result that this is almost the only 
symbolic system bequeathed to us by the great contemplatives 
in which all the implications contained in the idea of the 
spiritual marriage have been worked out to their term. He 
saw clearly that the union of the soul with its Source could not 
be a barren ecstasy. That was to mistake a means for an end ; 
and to frustrate the whole intention of life, which is, on all 
levels, fruitful and creative. Therefore he says that in the fourth 
degree, the Bride who has been so greatly honoured, caught up 
to such unspeakable delight, sinks her own will and “is 
humiliated below herself.” She accepts the pains and duties 
in the place of the raptures of love; and becomes a source, a 
“parent” of fresh spiritual life. The Spomsa Dez develops into 
the Mater Divine gratie. That imperative need of life, to 
push on, to create, to spread, is here seen operating in the 
spiritual sphere. This forms that rare and final stage in the 
evolution of the great mystics, in which they return to 
the world which they forsook; and there live, as it were, 
as centres of transcendental energy, the creators of spiritual 


* * Subida del Monte Carmelo,” I. ii. cap. v. 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 167 


families, the partners and fellow-labourers with the Divine 
Life.t 


III 


We come now to the symbols which have been adopted by 
those mystics in whom temperamental consciousness of their 
own imperfection, and of the unutterable perfection of the 
Absolute Life to which they aspired, has overpowered all other 
aspects of man’s quest of reality. The “seek, and ye shall 
find” of the pilgrim, the “by Love shall He be gotten and 
holden” of the bride, can never seem an adequate description 
of experience to minds of this type. They are intent on the 
inexorable truth which must be accepted in some form by both 
these classes: the crucial fact that “we behold that which 
we are,” or, in other words, that “only the Real can know 
Reality.” Hence the state of the inward man, the “unreal- 
ness” of him when judged by any transcendental standard, 
is their centre of interest. His remaking or regeneration 
appears to them as the primal necessity, if he is ever to obtain 
rights of citizenship in the “ country of the soul.” 

We have seen that this idea of the New Birth, the remaking 
or transmutation of the self, clothed in many different symbols, 
runs through the whole of mysticism and much of theology. 
It is the mystic’s subjective reading of those necessary psycho- 
logical changes which he observes taking place within himself 
as his spiritual consciousness grows. His hard work of 
renunciation, of detachment from the things which that con- 
sciousness points out as illusory or impure, his purifications 
and trials, all form part of it. If that which is whole or perfect 
is to come, then that which is in part must be done away: 
“for in what measure we put off the creature, in the same 
measure are we able to put on the Creator: neither more 
nor less.” 2 

Of all the symbolic systems in which this truth has been 
enshrined none is so complete, so picturesque, and now so little 
understood as that of the “ Hermetic Philosophers ” or Spiritual 
Alchemists. This fact would itself be sufficient to justify us 
in examining some of the chief features of their symbolism, 


* Vide infra, pt. ii. caps. i. and x. 
2 *¢ Theologia Germanica,”’ cap. i. 


168 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


There is a further excuse for this apparently eccentric pro- 
ceeding, however, in the fact that the language of alchemy’ was 
largely—though not always accurately and consistently—used 
by the great mystic Jacob Boehme, and after him by his English 
disciple, William Law. Without, then, some knowledge of the 
terms which they employed, but seldom explained, the writings 
of this important school can hardly be understood. 

I do not propose in this place to enter upon a long and 
detailed discussion of the alchemic symbols and their applica- 
tion to the mystic life. These symbols are full of an often 
deliberate obscurity, which makes their exact interpretation a 
controversial matter at the best. Moreover, the various authors 
of the Hermetic writings do not always use them in the same 
sense, and whilst many of these writings are undoubtedly mys- 
tical, others clearly deal with the physical quest of gold: nor 
have we any sure standard by which to divide class from class. 

The elements from which the spiritual alchemists built up 
their amazing allegories of the mystic life are, however, easily 
grasped: and these elements, together with the significance 
generally attributed to them, are as much as those who are 
not specialists can hope to unravel from this very tangled 
skein. First, there are the metals, of course the obvious 
materials of physical alchemy. These are usually called by 
the names of their presiding planets: thus in Hermetic language 
Luna means silver, Sol gold, &c. Then there is the Vessel, 
or Athanor, in which the transmutation of base metal to gold 
took place: an object whose exact nature is veiled in much 
mystery. The Fire and various solvents and waters, peculiar to 
the different alchemistic recipes, complete the apparatus neces- 
sary to the “Great Work.” 

The process of this work, sometimes described in chemical, 
and sometimes in astrological terms, is more often than not 
veiled in a strange heraldic and zoological symbolism dealing 
with Lions, Dragons, Eagles, Vultures, Ravens and Doves: 
which, delightful in its picturesqueness, is unequalled in its power 
of confusing the anxious and unwary enquirer. It is also the 
subject of innumerable and deliberate allegories, which were 


© 


supposed to convey its secrets to the elect, whilst most certainly | 


concealing them from the crowd. Hence it is that the author 
of “A Short Enquiry concerning the Hermetic Art” speaks for 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 169 


all investigators of this subject when he describes the“ Her- 
metic science” as a“ great Labyrinth, in which are abundance of 
enquirers rambling to this day, many of them undiscerned by 
one another.” Like him, I too “have taken several Turns in it 
myself, wherein one shall meet with very few; for ’tis so large, 
and almost every one taking a different Path, that they seldom 
meet. But finding it a very melancholy place, I resolved to get 
out of it, and rather content myself to walk in the little garden 
before the entrance, where many things, though not all, were 
orderly to be seen. Choosing rather to stay there, and con- 
template on the Metaphor set up, than venture again into the 
wilderness.” * 

Coming, then, to the “Contemplation of the Metaphor set 
up, ’—by far the most judicious course for modern students of 
the Hermetic art—we observe first that the prime object of 
alchemy was held to be the production of the Philosopher’s 
Stone; that perfect and incorrupt substance, or “ noble Tincture,” 
never found upon our imperfect earth in its natural state, which 
could purge all baser metals of their dross, and turn them to 
pure gold. The quest of the Stone, in fact, was but one aspect 
of man’s everlasting quest of perfection, his hunger for the 
Absolute; and hence an appropriate symbol of the mystic 
life. But this quest was not conducted in some far off tran- 
scendental kingdom. It was prosecuted in the Here and Now, 
amongst the ordinary things of natural life. 

Gold, the Crowned King, or Sol, as it is called in the 
planetary symbolism of the alchemists, was their standard of 
perfection, the “Perfect Metal.” Towards it, as the Christian 
towards sanctity, their wills were set. It had for them a 
value not sordid but ideal. Nature, they thought, is always 
trying to make gold, this incorruptible and perfect thing ; and 
the other metals are merely the results of the frustration of her 
original design. Nor is this aiming at perfection and achieving 
of imperfection limited to the physical world. Quod superius, 
sicut quod infertus. Upon the spiritual plane also they held 
that the Divine Idea is always aiming at “ Spiritual Gold ”— 
divine humanity, the New Man, citizen of the transcendental 
world—and “natural man” as we ordinarily know him is a 
lower metal, silver at best, a departure from the “plan”; who 


t «* A Short Enquiry Concerning the Hermetic Art,’’ p. 29. 


170 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


yet bears within himself, if we could find it, the spark or seed 
of absolute perfection: the “tincture ” which makes gold. “The 
smattering I have of the Philosopher’s Stone,” says Sir Thomas 
Browne, “(which is something more than the perfect exaltation 
of gold) hath taught me a great deal of divinity, and instructed 
my belief how that immortal spirit and incorruptible substance 
of my soul may lie obscure, and sleep awhile within this house 
of flesh.” This “incorruptible substance” is man’s goldness, 
his perfect principle: for “the highest mineral virtue resides in 
Man,” says Albertus Magnus, “and Gold may be found every 
where.” 2 Hence the prosecution of a spiritual chemistry is a 
proper part of the true Hermetic science. 

The art of the alchemist, whether spiritual or physical, 
consists in completing the work of perfection, bringing forth 
and making dominant, as it were, the “latent goldness” which 
“lies obscure” in metal or man. The ideal adept of alchemy 
was therefore an “auxiliary of the Eternal Goodness.” By his 
search for the “Noble Tincture” which should restore an 
imperfect world, he became a partner in the business of 
creation, assisting the Cosmic Plan. 

The proper art of the Spiritual Alchemist, with whom alone 
we are here concerned, was the production of the spiritual and 
only valid tincture or Philosopher’s Stone, the mystic seed of 
transcendental life which should invade, tinge, and wholly 
transmute the imperfect self into spiritual gold. That this 
was no fancy of seventeenth-century allegorists, but an idea 
familiar to many of the oldest writers upon alchemy—whose 
quest was truly a spiritual search into the deepest secrets of the 


soul—is proved by the words which bring to an end the first | 


part of the antique “ Golden Treatise upon the Making of the 
Stone,” sometimes attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. “ This, 


O Son,” says that remarkable tract, “is the Concealed Stone of 


Many Colours ; which is born and brought forth in one colour ; — 
know this and conceal it . . . it leads from darkness into light, 


* © Religio Medici,” pt. i. 


2 “(A Suggestive Enquiry into the Hermetic Mystery,” p. 143. This rare and — 


curious study of spiritual alchemy was the anonymous work of the late Mrs. Atwood, 
who attempted to suppress it soon after publication under the impression—common 


amongst mystics of a certain type—that she had revealed matters which might not — 
be spoken of. In the same way Coventry Patmore destroyed his masterpiece, 


‘*Sponsa Dei.” 


Se ee 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 171 


from this desert wilderness to a secure habitation, and from 
poverty and straits to a free and ample fortune.” ? 

Man, then, was for the alchemists “the true laboratory of 
the Hermetic art”; which concealed in an entanglement otf 
vague and contradictory symbols the life-process of his ascen- 
sion to that perfect state in which he was able to meet God. 
This state must not be confused with a merely moral purity, 
but must be understood as involving utter transmutation into 
a“new form.” It naturally followed from this that the in- 
dwelling Christ, the “ Corner Stone,” the Sun of Righteousness, 
became, for many of the Christian alchemists, identified with 
the Lapis Philosophorum and with Sol: and was regarded both 
as the image and as the earnest of this “great work.” His 
spirit was the “noble tincture” which “can bring that which is 
lowest in the death to its highest ornament or glory,” 2 trans- 
mutes the natural to the supernatural, operates the “ New Birth.” 
“This,” says Boehme, “is the noble precious Stone (Lapzs Phelo- 
sophorum), the Philosopher’s Stone, which the Magi (or wise 
men) find which tzmctureth nature, and generateth a new son 
in the old. He who findeth that, esteemeth more highly 
of it than of this (outward) world. For the Son is many 
thousand times greater than the Father.” Again, “If you 
take the sfzrvit of the tincture, then indeed you go on a way 
in which many have found Sol; but they have followed on 
the way to the heart of Sol, where the spirit of the heavenly 
tincture hath laid hold on ¢hem, and brought them into the 
liberty, into the Majesty, where they have Known the Noble 
Stone, Lapis Philosophorum, the Philosopher’s Stone, and 
have stood amazed at man’s blindness, and seen _ his 
labouring in vain. Would you fain find the Noble Stone? 
Behold we will show it you plain enough, if you be a Magus, 
and worthy, else you shall remain blind still: therefore fall to 
work thus: for it hath no more but three numbers. First tell 
from one till you come to the Cross, which is ten (X).... 
and there lieth the Stone without any great painstaking, for it is 
pure and not defiled with any earthly nature.” 

“In this stone there lieth hidden, whatsoever God and the 


* Quoted in ‘fA Suggestive Enquiry into the Hermetic Mystery,” p. 107. The 
whole of the “Golden Treatise ” will be found set out in this work. 
? Jacob Boehme, ‘‘ The Threefold Life of Man,” cap. iv. § 23. 


172 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Eternity, also heaven, the stars and elements contain and are 
able to do. There never was from eternity anything better or 
more precious than this, and it is offered by God and bestowed 
upon man; every one may have it... it is in a simple form, 
and hath the power of the whole Deity in it.”! 

Boehme, however, is here using alchemic symbols, according 
to his custom, in a loose and artistic manner; for the true 
Hermetic Philosopher’s Stone is not something which can be 
found but something which must be made. The alchemists, 
whether their search be for a physical or a spiritual “ tincture,” 
say always that this tincture is the product of the furnace 
and Athanor: and further that it is composed of “three num- 
bers” or elements, which they call Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury. 
These, when found, and forced into the proper combination, 
form the “ Azoth” or “Philosopher’s Egg ”—the stuff or First 
Matter of the Great Work. Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury, how- 
ever, must not be understood in too literal a sense. 

“You need not look for our metallic seed among the 
elements,” says Basil the Monk, “it need not be sought so far 
back. If you can only rectify the Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt 
(understand those of the sages) until the metallic spirit and body 
are inseparably joined together by means of the metallic soul, 
you thereby firmly rivet the chain of love and prepare the palace 
for the Coronation.” 2 

Of these three ingredients, the important one is the spiritual 
principle, the unseizable Mercury ; which is far from being the 
metal which we ordinarily know by that name. The Mercury 
which the alchemists sought—often in strange places—is a 
hidden and powerful substance. They call it “ Mercury of the 
Wise”; and he who can discover it, they say, is on the way 
towards success. The reader in search of mystical wisdom 
already begins to be bewildered ; but if he persevere in this 
labyrinth of symbolism, he presently discovers—as Basil the 
Monk indeed hints—that the Sulphur and the Salt, or “ metallic 
soul and body” of the spiritual chemistry, represent something 
analogous to the body and mind of man—Sulphur his earthly 


* Boehme, ‘The Threefold Life of Man,” cap. vi. § 98; cap. x. §§ 3, 4; and 
cap. xill. § I. 

2 «The Golden Tripod of the Monk Basilius Valentinus ’’ (The Hermetic Museum, 
vol. i. p. 319). 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 173 


nature, seasoned with intellectual salt. The Mercury is Spirit in 
its most mystic sense, the Synteresis or holy Dweller in the Inner- 
most, the immanent spark or Divine Principle of his life. Only 
the “ wise,’ the mystically awakened, can know this Mercury, 
the agent of man’s transmutation: and until it has been discovered, 
brought out of the hiddenness; nothing can be done. “ This 
Mercury or Snowy Splendour, is a Celestial Body drawn from 
the beams of the Sun and the Moon. It is the only Agent in - 
the world for this art.”* It is the divine-human “spark of the 
soul,” the bridge between Gold and Silver, God and Man. 

The Three Principles being enclosed in the vessel, or 
Athanor, which is man himself, and subjected to a gentle fire 
—the /ucendium Amoris—the process of the Great Work, the 
mystic transmutation of natural into spiritual man, can begin. 
This work, like the ingredients which compose it, has “three 
numbers”: and the first matter, in the course of its transmu- 
tation, assumes three successive colours: the Black, the White, 
and the Red. These three colours are strictly analogous to the 
three traditional stages of the Mystic Way: Purgation, [llumin- 
ation, Union. 

The alchemists call the first stage, or Blackness, Putre- 
faction. In it the three principles which compose the “whole 
man ” of body, soul and spirit, are “ sublimated ” till they appear 
as a black powder full of corruption, and the imperfect body is 
“dissolved and purified by subtle Mercury”; as man is purified by 
the darkness, misery, and despair which follows the emergence 
of his spiritual consciousness. As psychic uproar and disorder 
seems part of the process of mental growth, so “ Solve et coagula” 
—break down that you may build up—is the watchword of the 
spiritual alchemist. The “ black beast,” the passional element, _ 
of the lower nature must emerge and be dealt with before any- : 
thing further can be done. ‘“ There is a black beast in our 
forest,” says the highly allegorical “ Book of Lambspring,” “his 
name is Putrefaction, his blackness is called the Head of the 
Raven ; when it is cut off, Whiteness appears.”2 This White- 
ness, the state of Luna, or Silver, the “chaste and immaculate 
Queen,” is the equivalent of the IJluminative Way: the highest 
point which the mystic can attain short of union with the 


t *¢ A Short Enquiry Concerning the Hermetic Art,” p. 17. 
2 “The Hermetic Museum,” vol. i. p. 272. 


174 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Absolute. This White Stone is pure, and precious; but in it 
the Great Work of man’s spiritual evolution has not yet reached 
its term. That term is the attainment of the Red, the colour of 
Perfection or alchemic gold; a process sometimes called the 
“Marriage of Luna and Sol”—the fusion of the human and 
divine spirit. Under this image is concealed the final secret of 
the mystic life : that ineffable union of finite and infinite—that 
loving reception of the inflowing vitality of God—from which 
comes forth the Magnum Opus: deified or spiritual man. 

“ This,” says the author of “A Suggestive Enquiry,” “is the 
union supersentient, the nuptials sublime, Wenzzs et Universz. .. . 
Lo! behold I will open to thee a mystery, cries the Adept, the 
bridegroom crowneth the bride of the north [ze she who comes 
out of the cold and darkness of the lower nature]. In the 


darkness of the north, out of the crucifixion of the cerebral life, — 


when the sensual dominant is occultated in the Divine Fiat, and 
subdued, there arises a Light wonderfully about the summit, 
which wisely returned and multiplied according to the Divine 
Blessing, is made substantial in life.” * 

I have said, that side by side with the metallic and planetary 
language of the alchemists, runs a strange heraldic symbolism 
in which they take refuge when they fear—generally without 
reason—that they are telling their secrets too plainly to an 
unregenerate world. Many of these heraldic emblems are used 
in an utterly irresponsible manner; and whilst doubtless con- 
veying a meaning to the individual alchemist and the disciples 
for whom he wrote, are, and must ever be, unintelligible to other 
men. But others are of a more general application ; and appear 
so frequently in seventeenth-century literature, whether mystical 
or non-mystical, that some discussion of them may well be 
~ of use. 

Perhaps the quaintest and most celebrated of all these 
allegories is that which describes the quest of the Philosopher’s 
Stone as the “hunting of the Green Lion.”2 The Green Lion, 
though few would divine it, is the First Matter of the Great 
Work: hence, in spiritual alchemy, natural man in his whole- 


* «¢ A Suggestive Enquiry,” p. 354. 

2 See ‘A Short Enquiry,” p.17, and ‘‘ A Suggestive Enquiry,” pp. 297 ef seq. 
where the rhymed Alchemic tract called ‘‘ Hunting the Greene Lyon” is printed 
in full. 


MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 175 


ness—Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury in their crude state. He is 
called green because, seen from the transcendent standpoint, he 
is still unripe, his latent powers undeveloped ; and a Lion, 
because of his strength, fierceness, and virility. Here the 
common opinion that a pious effeminacy, a diluted and amiable 
spirituality, is the proper raw material of the mystic life, is 
emphatically contradicted. It is not by the education of the 
lamb, but by the hunting and taming of the wild intractable - 
lion, instinct with vitality, full of ardour and courage, exhibiting 
heroic qualities on the sensual plane, that the Great Work is 
achieved. The lives of the saints enforce the same law. 


‘*Our lyon wanting maturitie 
Is called greene for his unripeness trust me: 
And yet full quickly he can run, 
And soon can overtake the Sun.’’! 


The Green Lion, then, in his strength and wholeness is the 
only creature potentially able to attain Perfection. It needs the 
adoption and purification of all the wealth and resources of 
man’s nature, not merely the encouragement of his transcen- 
dental tastes, if he is to overtake it and achieve the Great Work. 
The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by violence, not by amiable 
aspiration. “The Green Lion,” says one alchemist, “is the 
priest by whom Sol and Luna are wed.” .In other words, the 
raw stuff of indomitable human nature is the means by which 
man is to attain union with the Absolute. 

The duty of the alchemist, then, the transmuting process, is 
described as the hunting of the Green Lion through the forest 
of the sensual world. He, like the Hound of Heaven, is on a 
love chase down the nights and down the days. 

When the lion is caught, when Destiny overtakes it, as the 
preliminary to the necessary taming process, its head must be 
cut off. This is called by the alchemists “the head of the 
Raven,” the Crow, or the Vulture, “for its blackness.” It 
represents the fierce and corrupt life of the passions: and its 
removal is that “death of the lower nature” which is the object 
of all asceticism—ze. Purgation. The lion, the whole man, 
Humanity in its strength, is as it were “slain to the world,” 


* OP. ctt. 


176 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


and then resuscitated; but in a very different shape. By its 
passage through this mystic death or the “putrefaction of the 
Three Principles” the “colour of unripeness” is taken away. 
Its taming completed, it receives wings, wherewith it may fly 
up to Sol, the Perfect or Divine; and is transmuted, say the 
alchemists, into the Red Dragon. This is of course to us a 
hopelessly grotesque image: but to the Hermetic philosophers, 
whose sense of wonder was yet uncorrupt, it was the deeply 
mystical emblem of a new, strange, and transcendental life, | 
powerful alike in earth and in heaven. As the angel to the 
man, so was the dragon to the world of beasts: a creature of 
splendour and terror, a super-brute, veritably existent if seldom 
seen. We may perhaps realize something of the significance of 
this symbol for the alchemic writers, if we remember how sacred 
a meaning it has for the Chinese: to whom it is the traditional 
emblem of free spiritual life, as the tiger represents the life of 
the material plane in its intensest form. Since it is from China 
that the practice of alchemy is supposed to have reached the 
European world, it may yet be found that the Red Dragon is 
one of the most antique and significant symbols of the Her- 
metic Art. 

For the Spiritual Chemistry, then, the Red Dragon repre- 
sents Deified Man ; whose emergence must always seem like 
the birth of some monstrous and amazing creature when seen 
from the standpoint of the merely natural world. With his 
coming forth, the business of the alchemist, in so far as he be a 
mystic, is done. Man has transcended his lower nature, has 
received wings wherewith to live on higher levels of reality. 
The Tincture, the latent goldness, has been found and made 
dominant, the Wagnum Opus achieved. That the true and 
inward business of that Work, when stripped of its many 
emblematic veils, was indeed the reordering of spiritual rather 
than material elements, is an opinion which rests on a more 
solid foundation than personal interpretations of old allegories 
and alchemic tracts. The Norwich physician—himself deeply 
read in the Hermetic science—has declared to us his own 
certainty concerning it in few but lovely words. In them is 
contained the true mystery of man’s eternal and interior quest 
of the Stone: its reconciliation with that other, outgoing quest 
of “the Hidden Treasure that desires to be found,” 





MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 177 


“Do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve 
things beyond their First Matter, and you discover the habita- 
tion of Angels : which, if I call it the ubiquitary and omni- 
present Essence of God, I hope I shall not offend Divinity.” ! 


* Sir Thomas Browne, ‘‘ Religio Medici,” pt. i. 


CHAPTER) Vil 
MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 


Persistence of occultism—It accompanies mystical activity—is often confused with 
it—It is a serious philosophy—lIts claim stated and criticized—Its limits—It does not 
attain the Absolute—It influences all religion and some science—It is based on 
psychological laws—Its aim is to enlarge man’s universe—Its method is enhance- 
ment of the will—Modern magic—‘‘ New” Thought—The doctrines. of.Magic— 


Eliphas Lévi—Hermes Trismegistus—Three occult dogmas—(1) The Astral Light—_ 


antiquity of this idea—The Cosmic memory—-The ‘‘ universal agent ’’—(2) The 
Power of the Will—Occult education—a re-making of character—Magic ceremonies 
agents of will-enhancement—addressed to the subconscious mind—Value of 
liturgies—Symbols—they are (a) instruments of self-suggestion (4) autoscopes— 
(3) The Doctrine of Analogy—Its breadth of application—in mysticism—in art— 


Abnormal power of the trained will over the body—in religion—in producing 


transcendental consciousness—Mental healing purely magical—Attitude of occultism 


to suffering—The pure theory of magic—its defects—its influence on character— 


Magic and religion—Occult elements in Christianity—Ceremonial religion largely 
magical—This is necessarily so—The inner and the outer church—The Church of 


Mysticism and Church of Magic 


—or, in ecclesiastical language, the heresies—into which 
men have been led by a feeble, a deformed, or an arrogant | 


lf seems hardly necessary to examine in detail the mistakes 


mystical sense. The number of such mistakes is countless; 
their wildness almost inconceivable to those who have not been 
forced to study them. Too often it has happened that the loud 
voices and strange declarations of their apostles have drowned 
the quieter accents of the orthodox. | 

It would seem as though the moment of puberty were far 
more critical in the spiritual than it is in the physical life: the 
ordinary dangers of adolescence being intensified when they 
appear upon the higher levels of consciousness. Man, becom- 
ing aware of a new power and new desires within him, abruptly 
subjected to the influx of new life, is dazzled and pleased by 


every brilliant and fantastic guess, every invitation, which is 
178 ‘ 


Sy 


( 


Recah 


See Us 


eee 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 179 


offered to him. In the condition of psychic disorder which 
is characteristic of his movement to new states, he is unusually 
at the mercy of the suggestions and impressions which he 
receives. Hence in every period of mystical activity we find 
an outbreak of occultism, illuminism, or other perverted spiritu- 
ality. In the youth of the Christian Church, side by side with 
the great Neoplatonists, we have the arrogant and disorderly 
transcendentalism of the Gnostics: their attempted fusion of the 
ideals of mysticism and magic. During the Middle Ages and 
the Renaissance there is the spurious mysticism of the Brethren 
of the Free Spirit, the occult propaganda of Paracelsus, the 
Rosicrucians, the Christian Kabalists ; and the innumerable 
pantheistic, Manichean, mystery-making, and Quietist heresies _ 
which made war upon Catholic tradition. Usually owing their 
existence to the undisciplined will and imagination of some 
individual adventurer, these died with the death of his influence, 
and only the specialist in strange faiths now cares to trouble 
their graves, 

But it is otherwise with the root idea whence these perverse 
activities most usually develop. This cannot be so easily dis- 
missed, nor is it in our interest so to treat it; for, as Reality 
is best defined by means of negatives, so the right doctrine is 
often more easily understood after a consideration of the wrong. 
In the case of mysticism, which deals largely with the unutter- 
able, and where language at once exact and affirmative is 
particularly hard to find, such a course is almost certain to 
help us. Leaving therefore the specifically mystical error of 
Quietism until we come to the detailed discussion of the states 
of orison, we will consider some of those other super-normal 
activities of the self which we have already agreed to classify as 
magic :? and learn through them more of the hidden forces 
which she has at her command, the dangerous liberty which she 
enjoys in their regard. 

The word “ magic” is now out of fashion, though its spirit 
was never more widely diffused than at the present time. 
Thanks to the gradual debasement of the verbal currency, it 
suggests to the ordinary reader the art practised by Mr. 
_Maskelyne. The shelf which is devoted to its literature at 
the London Library contains many useful works on sleight-of- 


* Supra, p. 84. 


180 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


hand and parlour tricks. It has dragged with it in its fall the 
terrific verb “to conjure,” which, forgetting that it once com- 
pelled the spirits of men and angels, is now content to produce 
rabbits from top-hats. This circumstance would have little 
more than philological importance, were it not that the true 
adepts of modern occultism—annoyed, one supposes, by this 
abuse of their ancient title—tend more and more to arrogate to 
- their tenets and practices the name of “ Mystical Science.” 
_ Vaughan, in his rather supercilious survey of the mystics, long 
ago classed all forms of white magic, alchemy, and occult 
philosophy as “theurgic mysticism,’? and, on the other side of 
the shield, the occultists display an increasing eagerness to claim 
the mystics as masters in their school.2 Even the “three-fold 
way” of mysticism has been adopted by them, and relabelled 
“ Probation, Enlightenment, Initiation.” 3 

In our search for the characteristics of mysticism we have 
already marked the boundary which separates it from magic: 
and tried to define the true nature and intention of occult 
philosophy. Now, I think, we may usefully ask of magic 
in its turn what it can tell us of the transcendental powers 
and consciousness of man. We saw that it represented the 
instinctive human “desire to know more” applied to supra- 
sensible things. For good or ill this desire and the occult 
sciences and magic arts which express it, have haunted — 
humanity from the earliest times. No student of man dare ~ 
neglect their investigation, however distasteful to his intelli- 
gence their superficial absurdities may be. : 

The starting-point of all magic and of all magical religion— — 
the best and purest of occult activities—is, as in mysticism, 
man’s inextinguishable conviction that there are other planes 
of being than those which his senses report to him; and its © 
proceedings represent the intellectual and individualistic results 
of this conviction—his craving for the hidden knowledge. It 
is, in the eyes of those who practise it, a soyen de parvenir: 
not the performance of illicit tricks, but a serious and philo- 

* R. A. Vaughan, ‘‘ Hours with the Mystics,” vol. i. bk. i. ch. v. 

? In a list published by Papus from the archives of the Martinists, we find such 
diverse names as Averroes, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, and Sweden- 
borg, given as followers of the occult tradition ! 


3 See R. Steiner, ‘‘ The Way of Initiation,” p. 111. 
4 Supra, loc. cit. 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 181 


sophic attempt to solve the riddle of the world. Its result, 
according to one of the best modern writers upon occult philo- 
sophy, “ comprises an actual, positive, and realizable knowledge 
concerning the worlds which we denominate invisible, because 
they transcend the imperfect and rudimentary faculties of a 
partially developed humanity, and concerning the latent poten- 
tialities which constitute, by the fact of their latency—the 
interior man. In more strictly philosophical language, the 
Hermetic science is a method of transcending the phenomenal 
world and attaining to the reality which is behind phenomena.” ! 

Though certain parts of this enormous claim seem able 
to justify themselves in experience, the whole of it cannot be 
admitted. The last phrase in particular is identical with the 
promise which we have seen to be characteristic of mysticism. 
It presents magic as a pathway to reality. We may as well 
say at once that this promise is not fulfilled; for the apparent 
transcending of phenomena does not necessarily entail the 
attainment of the Absolute. Such an attainment must, as its 
first condition, meet and satisfy upon the plane of reality each 
activity of the self: Love, Will, and Thought. Magic at its 
best only satisfies two of these claimants ; and this by extend- 
ing rather than escaping the boundaries of the phenomenal 
world. At its worst, it satishes none. It stands for that form 
of transcendentalism which does abnormal things, but does not 
lead anywhere: and we are likely to fall victims to some kind 
of magic the moment that the declaration “I want to know” 
ousts the declaration “I want to be” from the chief place in 
our consciousness. The true “science of ultimates” must be a 
science of pure Being, for reasons which the reader is now , 
in a position to discover for himself: but magic is merely a 
system whereby the self tries to assuage its transcendental 
curiosity by an extension of the activities of the will beyond 
their usual limits, obtaining by this means experimental know- 
ledge of planes of existence usually—but inaccurately—regarded 
as “supernatural.” 

It will, no doubt, be felt by those who are not occultists that 
even this modified claim needs justification. Few recognize 
that the whole business of the true magician is not with vulgar 
marvels, but with transcendental matters: fewer still that this 


* A. E. Waite, ‘‘ The Occult Sciences,” p. 1. 


182 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


business may be prosecuted with honesty and success. The 
search after hidden things has become synonymous with foolish 
and disreputable deceits: and the small but faithful company 
of Thrice-great Hermes is confused with the army of camp- 
followers which preys upon its ranks, 

Most persons who do not specialize in the eccentric sciences 
are of opinion that in these days the occultist can only be said 
to exist in either the commercial or the academic sense. The | 
Bond Street palmist may represent one class; the annotator 
of improper grzmozres the other. In neither department is the 
thing supposed to be taken seriously: it is merely the means 
of obtaining money or of assuaging a rather morbid curiosity. 

Such a view is far from being accurate. In magic, whether 
we choose to regard it as a superstition or a science, we have 
at any rate the survival of a great and ancient tradition, the 
true splendour and meaning of whose title should hardly have 
been lost in a Christian country; for it claims to be the 
science of those Magi whose quest of the symbolic Blazing 
Star brought them once, at least, to the cradle of the In- 
carnate God. Its laws, and the ceremonial rites which express 
those laws, have come down to us from immemorial antiquity. 
They enshrine a certain definite knowledge, and a large 
number of less definite theories, concerning the sensual and 
supersensual worlds, and concerning powers which man, 
according to occult thinkers, may develop if he will. Ortho- 
dox persons should be careful how they condemn the laws of 
magic: for they unwittingly conform to many of them whenever 
they go to church. All formal religion is saturated with magic. 
The art of medicine will never wholly cast it off: many cen- 
turies ago it gave birth to that which we now call modern 
science, It seems to possess inextinguishable life. This is 
not surprising when we perceive how firmly occultism is rooted 
in psychology: how perfectly it is adapted to certain perennial 
characteristics of the human mind—its curiosity, its arrogance, 
its love of mystery. 

Magic, in its perfect and uncorrupted form, claims to be a 
practical, intellectual, highly individualistic science, working 
towards a declared end: that, namely, of enlarging the sphere 
on which the will of man can work and obtaining experimental 
knowledge of planes of being usually regarded as transcen- 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 183 


dental. It is the last descendant of a long line of teaching— 
the whole teaching, in fact, of the mysteries of Egypt and 
Greece—which aims at initiating man into the secrets of 
knowledge, and aspires, egoistically, to an understanding of 
things, “In every man,” says a living occultist, “there are 
latent faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself 
knowledge of the higher worlds ...as long as the human 
race has existed there have always been schools in which 
those who possessed these higher faculties gave instruction 
to those who were in search of them. Such are called the 
occult schools, and the instruction which 1s imparted therein 
is called esoteric science or the occult teaching.” * 

These schools, at least as they exist in the present day, 
formulate the laws which govern occult phenomena in a manner 
which seems distressingly prosaic to the romantic inquirer ; 
borrowing from physics and psychology theories of vibration, 
attraction, mental suggestion and subconscious activity which 
can be reapplied for their own purposes. 

According to its modern teachers, magic is in essence 
simply an extension of the theory and practice of volition 
beyond the usual limits. The will, says the occultist, is king, 
not only of the House of Life, but of the universe outside the 
gates of sense. It is the key to “man limitless”; the true 
“ring of Gyges,” which can control the forces of nature, known 
and unknown. This aspect of occult philosophy informs much 
of the cheap American transcendentalism which is so lightly 
miscalled mystical by its teachers and converts; Menticulture, < 
“New” or “Higher Thought,” and the scriptures of the so- 
called “ New Consciousness.” The ingenious authors of “ Volo,” 
“The Will to be Well,” and “ Just How to Wake the Solar 
Plexus,” the seers who assure their eager disciples that by 
“Concentration” they may acquire not only health but also 
that wealth which is “health of circumstance,” are no mystics. 
They are magicians; and teach, though they know it not, 
little else but the cardinal doctrines of Hermetic science, 
omitting only their picturesque ceremonial accompaniments.? 

* Steiner, ‘‘ The Way of Initiation,” p. 66. 

2 See E. Towne, ‘‘ Joy Philosophy ” (1903) and ‘‘Just How to Wake the Solar 
Plexus” (1904); R. D. Stocker, ‘New Thought Manual” (1906) and ‘Soul 


Culture” (1905); Floyd Wilson, ‘‘ Man Limitless” (1905). But the literature of 
these sects is enormous. 


184 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


These cardinal doctrines, in fact, have varied little since 
their first appearance early in the world’s history: though, 
like the doctrines of theology, they have needed re-statement 
from time totime. In setting them out for the enlightenment 
of the modern reader, I shall quote largely from the works of 
Eliphas Lévi; the pseudonym under which Alphonse Louis 
Constant, probably the sanest and certainly the most readable 
occult philosopher of the nineteenth century, offered his con- . 
clusions to the world. 

Eliphas Lévi found in the,.old magical tradition, rehandled 
in the terms of contemporary thought, an adequate theory of 
the universe and rule of practical life. In his writings, there- 
fore, we see the Hermetic science under its most favourable 
aspect—Opus hierarchicum et Catholicum, as he proudly calls it 
upon the title-page of his great “ Histoire de la Magie.” It is 
the one object of his later works to exhibit—indeed to exag- 
gerate—its connection with true mysticism ; to show that it is 
“Le Clef des Grands Mystéres” which will open the gate of 
that Secret Garden on which the desire of the soul is ever set. 
The spectacle which he presents is that of a man of eager 
desires and natural intuitions, set, is is true, upon the quest 
of reality; but pursuing that quest by strange and twisted 
paths. It remains for us to examine with his help the nature 
of these paths and the prospects which they offer to other 
way farers. 

The tradition of magic, like most other ways ot escape 
which man has offered to his own soul, originated in the East. 
It was formulated, developed, and preserved by the religion of 
Egypt. It made an early appearance in that of Greece. It has 
its legendary grand master in Hermes Trismegistus, who gave 
to it its official name of Hermetic Science, and stands towards 
the magicians in much the same position as Moses occupied in 
the tradition of the Jews. Fragmentary writings attributed to 
this personage and contained in the so-called Hermetic books 
are the primitive scriptures of occultism: and the probably 
spurious Table of Emerald which is said to have been dis- 
covered in his tomb, ranks as the magician’s Table of Stone. 
In Gnosticism, in the superb allegories of the Kabalah, in much 
of the ceremonial of the Christian Church—fnally, in secret 
associations which still exist in England, France, and Germany 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 


—all that is best and truest im the “secret wisdom ” of magical 
tradition has wandered down the centuries, Its baser offshoots, 
by which it is unfortunately represented to the crowd, are but 
too well known and need not be particularized. 

Like the world which it professes to interpret, magic has a 
body and a soul: an outward vesture of words and ceremonies 
and an inner doctrine. The outward vesture, which is all that 
the uninitiated are permitted to perceive, is hardly attractive to 
the judicious eye of common sense. It consists of a series of 
confusing and often ridiculous symbolic veils: of strange words 
and numbers, grotesque laws and ritual acts, personifications 
and mystifications, wrapped one about the other as if the 
bewilderment of impatient investigators were its one design. 
The outward vestures of our religious, political, and social 
systems—which would probably appear equally irrational to a 
wholly ignorant yet critical observer—offer an instructive parallel 
to this aspect of occult philosophy. 

Stripped of these archaic formule, symbols, mystery-mon- 
gerings, and other adventitious trappings, magic is found to 
rest upon three fundamental axioms; none of which can be 
dismissed as ridiculous by those who listen respectfully to the 
amazing and ever-shifting hypotheses of fashionable psychology 
and physics. 

(1) The first of these axioms affirms the existence of an 
imponderable “medium” or “universal agent,” which is de- 
scribed as beyond the plane of our normal sensual perceptions 
yet interpenetrating and binding up the material world. This 
agent, which is not luminous and has nothing to do with the 
stars, is known to the occultists by the unfortunate name of 
“ Astral Light”: a term, originally borrowed from the Martinists 
by Eliphas Lévi, to which the religious rammage-sales of current 
theosophy have since given a familiarity which treads upon the 
margin of contempt. To live in conscious communication with 
the “ Astral Light” is to live upon the “ Astral Plane,” or in the 
Astral World: to have risen, that is to say, to a new level of 
consciousness. The education of the occultist is wholly directed 
towards this end. 

This doctrine of the Astral Plane, like most of our other 
diagrams of the transcendent, possesses not only a respectable 
ancestry, but also many prosperous relations in the world of 










AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


philosophic thought. Traces of it may even be detected under 
veils in the more recent speculations of orthodox physics. It is 
really identical with the “ Archetypal World” or Yesod of the 
Kabalah—the “ Perfect Land” of old Egyptian religion—in 
which exist the true or spirit forms of all created things. 
Perhaps it is connected with the “real world” described by 
such visionaries as Boehme and Blake. A persistent tradition 
as to the existence of such a plane of being or of consciousness 
is found all over the world: in Indian, Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, 
and Jewish thought. “ Above this visible nature there exists 
another, unseen and eternal, which, when all things created 
perish, does not perish,” says the Bhagavad Gita. According to 
the Kabalists it is “the seat of life and vitality, and the 
nourishment of all the world.”* Vitalism might accept it as 
one of those aspects of the universe which can be perceived by 
a more extended rhythm than that of normal consciousness. 
Various aspects of it have been identified with the “ Burning 
Body of the Holy Ghost” of Christian Gnosticism and with the 
Odic force of the old-fashioned spiritualists, 

According to the doctrine of magic the Astral Plane 
constitutes the “Cosmic Memory,” where the images of all 
beings and events are preserved, as they are preserved in the 
memory of man. 


‘¢ The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky”— 


all are living in the Astral World. There too the concepts of 
' future creation are present in their completeness in the Eternal 
_ Now, before being brought to birth in the material sphere. On 
this theory prophecy, and also clairvoyance—one of the great 
objects of occult education—consists in opening the eyes of the 
mind upon this timeless Astral World: and spiritualists, evoking 
the phantoms of the dead, merely call them up from the 
ecesses of universal instead of individual remembrance. The 
reader who feels his brain to be whirling amidst this medley 
of solemn statement and unproven fairy tale must remember 
that at best the dogmatic part of the occult tradition can only 


t A. E. Waite, ‘‘ Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah,”’ p. 48. 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 187 


represent the attempt of an extended consciousness to find an 
explanation of its own experiences. 

Further, in its strictly undenominational form, the Astral 
Light is first cousin to the intangible ether beloved of Sir Oliver 
Lodge and other transcendental physicists. In it our whole 
selves—not merely our sentient selves—are bathed; and here 
again we are reminded of Vitalism, with its unresting River of 
Life. Hence in occult language the all-penetrating Astral is a 
“universal agent”: the possible vehicle of hypnotism, telepathy, 
clairvoyance, and all those supernormal phenomena which 
science has taken out of the hands of the occultists and re- 
named metapsychic. This hypothesis also accounts for the 
confusing fact of an initial similarity of experience in many 
of the proceedings of mystic and occultist. Both must pass 
through the plane of consciousness which the concept of the 
“ Astral” represents, because this plane of perception is the one 
which lies “next beyond” our normal life. The transcendental 
faculties, once they are freed, become aware of this world: only, 
in the case of the mystic, to pass through it as quickly as they 
can. The occultist, on the contrary, is willing to rest in the 
“Astral” and develop his perceptions of this aspect of the world. 
It is the medium in which he works. 

From the earliest times, occult philosophy has proclaimed its 
knowledge of this medium: always describing its existence as a 
scientific fact, outside the range of our normal senses, but sus- 
ceptible of verification by the trained powers of the initiate. 
The possessor of such trained powers, not the wizard or the 
fortune-teller, is to be regarded as the true magician: and it is 
the first object of occult education, or initiation, to actualize this 
supersensual plane of experience, to give the student the power 
of entering into conscious communion with it, and teach him to 
impose upon its forces the directive force of his own will, as 
easily as he imposes that will upon the “material” things of 
sense.! | 
(2) This brings us to the second axiom of magic, which also 
has a curiously modern air: for it postulates simply the limit- 
less power of the disciplined human will. This dogma has been 
“taken over” without acknowledgment from occult philosophy 


* For a more detailed discussion of this subject the reader is referred to Steiner’s 
exceedingly curious and interesting little book, ‘‘ The Way of Initiation,” 


188 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


to become the trump card of menticulture, “ Christian Science,” 
and “New Thought.” The preachers of “ Joy Philosophy,” and 
other dilute forms of mental discipline, are the true priests of 
transcendental magic in the modern world.! 

The first lesson of the would-be magus is self-mastery. “ By 
means of persevering and gradual athletics,” says Eliphas Lévi, 
“the powers of the body can be developed to an amazing extent. 
It is the same with the powers of the soul. Would you govern 
yourself and others? Learn how to will. How may one learn 
how to will? This is the first secret of magical initiation ; and 
it was to make the foundations of this secret thoroughly under- 
stood that the antique keepers of the mysteries surrounded the 
approach to the sanctuary with so many terrors and illusions, 
They did not believe in a will until it had given its proofs; and 
they were right. Strength cannot prove itself except by con- 
quest. Idleness and negligence are the enemies of the will ; and 
this is the reason why all religions have multiplied their practices 
and made their cults difficult and minute. The more trouble 
one gives oneself for an idea, the more power one acquires in 
regard to that idea. ... Hence the power of religions resides 
entirely in the inflexible will of those who practise them.” 2 

In its essence, then, magical initiation is a traditional form 
of mental discipline, strengthening and focussing the will. By 
it, some of those powers of apprehension which lie below the 
threshold of ordinary consciousness are liberated, and enabled 
to report their discoveries to the active and sentient mind. This 
discipline, like that of the religious life, consists partly in physical 
austerities and in a deliberate divorce from the world, partly in 
the cultivation of will-power: but largely in a yielding of the 
mind to the influence of suggestions which have been selected 
and accumulated in the course of ages because of their power 
over that imagination which Eliphas Lévi calls “ The eye of the 
soul.” There is nothing supernatural about it. Like the more 
arduous, more disinterested self-training of the mystic, it is 
character-building with an object, conducted upon an heroic 

* Compare the following: ‘‘ Imagine that all the world and the starry hosts are 
waiting, alert and with shining eyes, to do your bidding. Imagine that you are to 
touch the button now, and instantly they will spring to do the rest. The instant you 
say, ‘‘ [can and I will,” the entire powers of the universe are to be set in motion”’ 
(E. Towne, ‘‘ Joy Philosophy,” p. 52). 

2 “* Rituel de la Haute Magie,” pp. 35, 36. 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 189 


scale. In magic the “will to know” is the centre round which 
the personality is rearranged. As in mysticism, subconscious 
factors are dragged from the hiddenness to form part of that 
personality. The uprushes of thought, the abrupt intuitions 
which reach us from the subliminal region, are developed, 
ordered, and controlled by rhythms and symbols which have 
become traditional because the experience of centuries has 
proved, though it cannot explain, their efficacy. 

“The fundamental principle,” says A. E. Waite, speaking of 
occult evocations, “was in the exercise of a certain occult force 
resident in the magus and strenuously exerted for the establish- 
ment of such a correspondence between two planes of nature as 
would effect his desired end. This exertion was termed the 
evocation, conjuration, or calling of the spirit, but that which in 
veality was vaised was the energy of the tnner man ; tremendously 
developed and exalted by combined will and aspiration, this 
energy germinated by sheer force a new intellectual faculty of 
sensible psychological perception. To assist and stimulate this 
energy into the most powerful possible operation, artificial 
means were almost invariably used. . . . The synthesis of these 
methods and processes was called Ceremonial Magic, which in 
effect was a tremendous forcing-house of the latent faculties of 
man’s spiritual nature.” ? 

This is the psychological explanation of those apparently 
absurd rituals of preparation, doctrines of signs and numbers, 
pentacles, charms, angelical names, the “power of the word” 
and all the rest, which go to make up ceremonial magic. The 


’ power of such artifices is known amongst the Indian mystics, 


who, recognizing in the Mantra, or occult and rhythmic formula, 
consciously held and repeated, an invaluable help to the attain- 


. ment of the true ecstatic states, are not ashamed to borrow them 


from the magicians. So, too, the modern American schools of 
mental healing and New Thought recommend concentration 
upon a carefully selected word as the starting-point of efficacious 
meditation. This fact of the enormous psychical effect of 
certain verbal combinations, when allowed to dominate the field 
of consciousness, is the practical reason of that need of a formal 
liturgy which is felt by nearly every great religion: for religion, 
on its ceremonial side, is always largely magical. It, too, seeks 

* «©The Occult Sciences,” p. 14. 


190 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


by artificial means to stimulate latent energies. The true magic 
“word” or spell is untranslatable; because its power resides 
only partially in that outward sense which is apprehended by 
the reason, but chiefly in the rhythm, which is addressed to the 
subliminal mind. Did the Catholic Church choose to acknow- 
ledge a law long known to the adepts of magic, she has here an 
explanation of that instinct which has caused her to cling so 
strenuously to a Latin liturgy, much of whose amazing and 
truly magic power would evaporate were it translated into the 
vulgar tongue. Symbols, religious and other, and symbolic acts 
which appear meaningless when judged by the intellect alone, 
perform a similar office. They express the deep-seated instinct 
of the human mind that it must have a focus on which to con- 
centrate its volitional powers, if those powers are to be brought 
to their highest state of efficiency. The nature of the focus 
matters little: its office matters much. I give a short extract 
from the “Rituel de la Haute Magie,” which sufficiently exhibits 
Lévi’s opinion on this subject. Many of its phrases might be 
fresh from the pen of the newest American psychologist. 

«|, . All these figures, and acts analogous to them, all 
these dispositions of numbers and of characters [ze. sacred 
words, charms, pentacles, &c.] are, as we have said, but instru- 
ments for the education of the will, of which they fix and — 
determine the habits. They serve also to concentrate in action 
all the powers of the human soul, and to strengthen the creative 


power of the imagination. ... A practice, even though it be 
superstitious and foolish, may be efficacious because it is a 
realization of the will. ... We laugh at the poor woman who 


denies herself a ha’porth of milk in the morning, that she may 
take a little candle to burn upon the magic triangle in some 
chapel. But those who laugh are ignorant, and the poor woman 
does not pay too dearly for the courage and resignation which 
she thus obtains. The wise pass proudly by shrugging their 
shoulders. They attack superstition with a clamour which 
shakes the world: and what happens? The houses which they 
build fall down, and their debris are re-sold to the providers and 
purchasers of little candles; who willingly allow it to be said 
that their power is at an end, since they know that their reign 
is eternal,” ? 


* * Rituel de la Haute Magie,” p. 71. 


J 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 191 


Magic symbols, therefore, from penny candles to Solomon’s 
seal, fall, in modern technical language, into two classes. The 
first contains instruments of self-suggestion, exaltation, and will 
direction. To this belong all spells, charms, rituals, perfumes : 
from the magician’s vervain wreath to the “Youth! Health! 
Strength!” which the student of New Thought repeats when 
she is brushing her hair in the morning. The second class 
contains autoscopes : 2.¢., material objects which focus and express 
the subconscious perceptions of the operator. The dowser’s 
divining rod, fortune-teller’s cards, and crystal-gazer’s ball, are 
characteristic examples. Both kinds are rendered necessary 
rather by the disabilities of the human than by the peculiarities 
of the superhuman plane: and the great adept, like the great 
saint, may attain heights at which he can entirely dispense with 
these “outward and visible signs.” “Ceremonies being, as we 
have said, artificial methods of creating certain habits of the will, 
they cease to be necessary when these habits have become fixed.” # 
This is a point at which the history of magic lights up for us 
certain peculiarities in the history of mysticism. 

These facts, now commonplaces of psychology, have been 
known and used by students of magic for countless generations. 
Those who decry the philosophy because of the apparent 
absurdity of its symbols and ceremonies should remember that 
the embraces, gestures, grimaces, and other ritual acts by which 
we all concentrate, liberate, or express love, wrath, or enthusiasm, 
will ill endure the cold revealing light of a strictly rational 
inquiry. 

(3) To the two dogmas of the “ Astral Light” or universal 
agent and the “power of the will” there is to be added a third : 
the doctrine of Analogy, or implicit correspondence between 
appearance and reality, the microcosm of man and the macrocosm 
of the universe, the seen and the unseen worlds. In this, oc- 
cultism finds the basis of all its transcendental speculations. 
Quod supertus sicut quod infertus—the first words of that 
Emerald Table which was once attributed to Hermes Tris- 
megistus himself—is an axiom which must be agreeable to all 
Platonists. It plays an enormous part in the theory of 
mysticism, which has always assumed that the path of the 
individual soul towards loving union with the Absolute is 


* “ Rituel de la Haute Magie,’’ p. 139. 


192 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


strictly analogous with the path on which the universe moves 
to its consummation in God. 

The notion of analogy ultimately determines the religious 
concepts of every race, and resembles the verities of faith in the 
breadth of its application: for it embraces alike the appearances 
of the visible world—which thus become the mirrors of the 
invisible—the symbols of religion, the tiresome arguments of 
Butler’s “ Analogy,” the sublime allegories of the Kabalah and 
the spiritual alchemists, and that childish “doctrine of signa- 
tures” on which much of mediaeval science was built. 

“ Analogy,” says Lévi,! “is the last word of science and the 
first word of faith ... the sole possible mediator between the 
visible and the invisible, between the finite and the infinite.” 
Here Magic clearly defines her own limitations; stepping 
incautiously from the useful to the universal, and laying down 
a doctrine which no mystic could accept—which, carried to 
its logical conclusion, would turn the adventure of the infinite 
into a guessing game. 

“ Analogy,” he says again—and this time, perhaps, with more 
propriety—‘“is the key of all the secrets of nature: . . . this is 
why religions seem to be written in the heavens and in all nature : 
this must be so, for the work of God is the book of God, and in 
that which he writes one should see the expression of his thought 
and consequently of his Being, since we conceive of him only as 
Supreme Thought.”2 Here we have a hint of that idealistic 
element which is implicit in occultism: as even the wildest 
heresies retain traces of the truths which they pervert. 

The argument by analogy is carried by the occultists to 
lengths which can hardly be set down in this place. Armed 
with this torch, they explore the darkest, most terrible mysteries 
of life: and do not hesitate to cast the grotesque shadows of 
these mysteries upon the unseen world. The principle of cor- 
respondence is no doubt a sound one, so long as it works 
within reasonable limits. It was admitted into the system of 
the Kabalah, though that astute philosophy was far from giving 
to it the importance which it assumes in Hermetic science. It 
has been accepted eagerly by many of the mystics. Boehme 
and Swedenborg gladly availed themselves of its method in 
presenting their intuitions to the world. It is implicitly ac- 


* * Dogme de la Haute Magie,” p. 361 ¢¢ seg. * Jbid., p. 363. 












MYSTICISM AND MAGI 


knowledged by thinkers of innumerable other s 
influence permeates the best periods of literature. Si 
Browne spoke for more than himself when he said, in 
known passage of the “ Religio Medici”: “ The severe 
shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Herm 
Trismegistus] that this visible world is but a picture 
invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly 
equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real subs 
in that invisible framework.” Such a sense of analogy, 
ever the “severe schools” may say, is the foundation of every 
perfect work of art. “Intuitive perception of the hidden 
analogies of things,” says Hazlitt in “ English Novelists,” “or, 
as it may be called, his zuzstznct of the tmagination, is perhaps 
what stamps the character of genius on the productions of art 
more than any other circumstance.” 

The central doctrine of magic may now be summed up 
thus :— 

(1) That a supersensible and real “cosmic medium ” exists, 
which interpenetrates, influences, and supports the tangible and 
apparent world, and is amenable to the categories both of 
philosophy and of physics. 

(2) That there is an established analogy and equilibrium 
between the real and unseen world, and the illusory manifesta- 
tions which we call the world of sense. 

(3) That this analogy may be discerned, and this equilibrium 
controlled, by the disciplined will of man, which thus becomes 
master of itself and of fate. 

We must now examine in more detail the third of these 
propositions—that which ascribes abnormal powers to the edu- 
cated and disciplined will: for this assumption lies at the root 
of all magical practices, alike of the oldest and the newest 
schools. “Magical operations,” says Eliphas Lévi, “are the 
exercise of a power which is natural, but superior to the 
ordinary powers of nature. They are the result of a science, 
and of habits, which exalt the human will above its usual 
limits.” This power of the will is daily gaining recognition 
in the camps of science, as the chief factor in religion and in 
therapeutics—the healing of the body and the healing of the soul 
—for our most advanced theories on these subjects are little more 


* “ Rituel de la Haute Magie,” p. 32. 
0 













ODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


wine of magic in new bottles. The accredited 
ical theory of religious “experience,” for instance, 
pon the hypothesis that by self-suggestion, by a 
te cultivation of the “will-to-believe,’ and similar 
it is possible to shift the threshold of consciousness, 

exhibit those supernormal perceptions which are 
ly attributed to inspiration and to disease. This is 
what ceremonial magic professes, in milder and more 
tWresque language, to do for her initiates: and all such 
eliberate processes of conversion are, on their psychological 
side, the results of an involuntary obedience to the laws of. 
Hermetic science. The ancient occultists owed much of their 
power, and also of their evil reputation, to the fact that they 
were psychologists before their time. 

Recipes for the alteration and exaltation of personality and 
for the enhancement of will-power, the artificial production of 
photisms, automatisms, and ecstasy, with the opening up of the 
subliminal field which accompanies these phenomena—con- 
cealed from the profane by a mass of confusing allegories and 
verbiage—form the backbone of all genuine occult rituals. 
Their authors were perfectly aware that ceremonial magic has 
no objective importance, but depends solely on its effect upon 
the operator’s mind. In order that this effect might be 
enhanced, it was given an atmosphere of sanctity and mystery ; 
its rules were strict, its higher rites difficult of attainment. 
It constituted at once a test of the student’s earnestness and 
a veil which guarded the sanctuary from the profane. The 
long and difficult preparations, majestic phrases, and strange 
ceremonies of an evocation had power, not over the spirit of 
the dead, but over the consciousness of the living, who was thus 
caught up from the world of sense to a new plane of perception. 
For him, not for unknown Powers, were these splendours and 
_ these arts displayed. The rationale of the evocation of an 

angel consists, not in summoning spirits from afar, but in 
opening the operator’s eyes upon angels who are always 
there. 

“When the spiritual exaltation of the Magus has been 
accomplished by . . . various ceremonial practices, the spirit is, 
in magical language, compelled to appear. That is to say, the 
operator has passed into a condition when it would be as 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 195 


impossible for a spirit to remain invisible to him as for an 
ordinary mortal to conceal itself from our common sight, with- 
out any intervening shelter, in the blaze of a noonday sun.”! 
Thus the whole education of the genuine occult student tends 
to awaken in him a new view and a new attitude. It adjusts 
the machinery of his cinematogra?h to the registering of new 
intervals in the stream of things, which passed it by before; 
and thus introduces new elements into that picture by which 
ordinary men are content to know and judge the—or rather 
thety—universe. 

“In the end,” says Steiner, with the usual exaggeration of 
the professional occultist, “it all resolves itself into the fact 
that man, ordinarily, carries body, soul, and spirit about with 
him, yet is conscious only of the body, not of the soul and 
spirit; and that the student attains to a similar consciousness 
of soul and spirit also.” 2 

So much for the principles which govern occult education. 
Magic therapeutics, or as it is now called, “ mental healing,” is 
but the application of these principles upon another plane. It 
results, first, from a view of humanity which sees a difference 
only of degree between diseases of body and of soul, and can 
state seriously and in good faith that ‘“‘ moral maladies are more 
contagious than physical, and there are some triumphs of 
infatuation and fashion which are comparable to leprosy or 
cholera.” 3 Secondly, it is worked by that enhancement of will 
power, that ability to alter and control weaker forms of life, 
which we have seen to be the reward of the occult discipline. 
“ All the power of the occult healer lies in his conscious will and 
all his art consists in producing faith in the patient.” 4 

This simple truth was in the possession of the magi at a time 
when Church and State saw no third course between the burning 
or beatification of its practitioners. Now, under the polite names 
of mental hygiene, suggestion, and therapeutics, it is steadily 
advancing to the front rank of medical shibboleths. Yet it is 
still the same “magic art” which has been employed for 
centuries, with varying ritual accompaniments, by the adepts 


* A. E. Waite, ‘* The Occult Sciences,” p. 32. 
2 “©The Way of Initiation,” p. 142. 

3 ‘* Dogme de la Haute Magie,” p. 129, 

4 “ Rituel,” p. 312. 


196 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of occult science. The methods of Brother Hilarian Tissot, who 
is described as curing lunacy and crime by “the unconscious 
use of the magnetism of Paracelsus,” who attributed his cases 
“either to disorder of the will or to the perverse influence of 
external wills,” and would “regard all crimes as acts of madness 
and treat the wicked as diseased,”’! anticipated the discoveries 
of Charcot and Janet. 


But in spite of the consistent employment by all the great . 


adepts of their “occult” or supernormal power in the healing 
and the prevention of disease, on its philosophic side magic, 
like Christianity, combines a practical policy of pity for the 
maimed, halt, and blind, with a creed of suffering and renuncia- 
tion. Here it joins hands with mysticism and proclaims its 
belief in pain as the schoolmaster of every spirit which desires 
to transcend the life of sense. Eliphas Lévi, whilst advising the 
initiate whose conscious will has reached its full strength to 
employ his powers in the alleviation of pain and prolongation 
of life, laughs at the student who seeks in magic a method of 
escaping suffering or of satisfying his own selfish desires. None, 
he says, knows better than the true magician that suffering is of 
the essence of the world plan. Only those who face it truly 
live. “Alas for the man who will not suffer! He will be 
crushed by griefs.”2 Again—perhaps his finest utterance— 
“To learn to suffer and to learn to die; this is the gymnastic of 
Eternity, the noviciate of immortal life. 3 

Here, then, is the pure theory of magic. It is seen at its 
best in Eliphas Lévi’s works; because he was, in some respects, 
greater than the system which he preached. Towards the close 
of his life the defective and limited nature of that system became 
clear to him, and in his latest writings he makes no secret of 


this fact. The chief of these defects is the peculiar temper 4 


of mind, the cold intellectual arrogance, the intensely individual 
point of view which occult studies seem to induce by their 
conscious quest of exclusive power and knowledge, their implicit 
neglect of love. At bottom, every student of occultism is 
striving towards a point at which he may be able to “touch the 
button ” and rely on the transcendental world “springing to do 
the rest.” In this hard-earned acquirement of power over the 
* * Dogme,” p. 134. * “*Fristoire de la Magie,”’ p. 36. 
3 Jbid., p. 147. 


i 


Ee ere ae ee 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 197 


Many, he terids to forget the One. In Lévi’s words, “ Too deep 
a study of she mysteries of nature may estrange from God the 
careless investigator, in whom mental fatigue paralyses the 
ardours of the heart.”! When he wrote this sentence Lévi 
stood, as the greater occultists have often done, at the very 
frontiers of mysticism. The best of the Hermetic philosophers, 
indeed, are hardly ever without such mystical hankerings, such 
flashes of illumination ; as if the transcendental powers of man, 
once roused from sleep, cannot wholly ignore the true end for 
which they were made. 

In Lévi’s case, as is well known, the discord between the 
occult and mystical ideals was resolved by that return to the 
Catholic Church which has always amazed and sometimes 
annoyed his commentators. Characteristically, he “read into” 
Catholicism much that the orthodox would hardly allow; so 
that it became for him, as it were, a romantic gloss on the 
occult tradition. He held that the Christian Church, nursing 
mother of the mystics, was also the heir of the magi; and 
that popular piety and popular magic veiled the same ineffable 
truths. 

He had more justification than at first appears probable for 
this apparently wild and certainly heretical statement. Religion, 
as we have seen, can never entirely divorce herself from magic: 
for her rituals and sacraments, whatever explanations of their 
efficacy may be offered by their official apologists, have, and 
must have if they are to be successful in their appeal to the 
mind, a magical character. All persons who are naturally 
drawn towards the ceremonial aspect of religion, are really 
devotees of the higher magic: are acknowledging the strange 
power of subtle rhythms, symbolic words and movements, over 
the human will. An “impressive service” conforms exactly to 
_ the description which I have already quoted of a magical rite: 
it is “a tremendous forcing-house of the latent faculties of man’s 
spiritual nature.” Sacraments, too, however simple their begin- 
nings, always tend, as they evolve, to assume upon the 
phenomenal plane a magical aspect. Those who have observed 
with understanding, for instance, the Roman rite of baptisin, 
with its spells and exorcisms, its truly Hermetic employment of 
salt, anointing chrism and ceremonial lights, must have seen in 


* «¢ Flistoire de la Magie,”’ p. 514. 


198 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


it a ceremony far nearer to the operations of whit= magic than 
to the simple lustrations practised by St. John the Baptist. 

There are obvious objections to the full working out of this 
subject in a book which is addressed to readers of all shades 
of belief; but any student who is interested in this branch 
of religious psychology may easily discover for himself the 
numerous and well-marked occult elements in the liturgies of 
the Christian—or indeed of any other—Church. There are 
invocative arrangements of the Names of God which appear 
alike in gvzmotre and in Missal ; sacred numbers, ritual actions, 
perfumes, purifications, words of power, hold as important a 
place in religion as in magic. In certain minor observances, 
and charm-like prayers, we seem to stand on the very border- 
land between magician and priest. 

It is inevitable that this should be so. The business of the 
Church is to appeal to the whole man, as she finds him living in 
the world of sense. She would hardly be adequate to this task 
did she neglect the powerful weapons which the occult tradition 
has put into her hand. She knows, implicitly, that only under 
those ecstatic conditions which it is the very object of magic to 
induce, can normal man open his door upon the Infinite, and let 
those subconscious powers which are the media of all our 
spiritual experiences emerge and peep for a moment upon the 
transcendental world. She, who takes the simplest and most 
common gifts of nature and transmutes them into heavenly food, 
takes also every discovery which the self has made concerning 
its own potentialities, and turns them to her own high ends. 
Founding her external system on sacraments and symbols, on 
rhythmic invocations and ceremonial acts of praise, insisting on 
the power of the pure and self-denying will and the “magic 
chain” of congregational worship, she does but join hands with 
those Magi whose gold, frankincense, and myrrh were the first 
eifts that she received. 

But she pays for this. She shares the limitations of the 
system which her Catholic nature has compelled her to absorb, 
It is true, of course, that she purges it of all its baser elements 
-——-its arrogance, its curiosity—true also that she is bound to 
adopt it because it is the highest common measure which she 
can apply to the spirituality of that world to which she is sent. 
But she cannot—and her great teachers have always known 


MYSTICISM AND MAGIC 199 


that she cannot—extract finality from a method which does not 
really seek after ultimate things. This method may and does 
teach men goodness, gives them happiness and health. It can 
even induce in them a certain exaltation in which they become 
aware, at any rate fora moment, of the existence of a transcen- 
dental world—a stupendous accomplishment. But it will never 
of itself make them citizens of that world: give to them the 
freedom of Reality. 

“The work of the Church in the world,” says Patmore, “is 
not to teach the mysteries of life, so much as to persuade the 
soul to that arduous degree of purity at which God Himself 
becomes her teacher. The work of the Church ends when the 
knowledge of God begins.” ! Thus in spite of persistent efforts 
to the contrary, there will always be an inner and an outer 
Church: the inner Church of the mystics who £xow, the outer 
Church which, operating beneficently it is true, but—roughly 
speaking—upon the magical plane, only knows about. The 
New Testament is not without its reminders that this was 
bound to be the case.? 


* “©The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘‘ Knowledge and Science,” xxii. 
? See, amongst other passages, Matt. xiii. 11, I Cor. il. 6, and iii. I. 


Ait ; 
we (Na iy ry 
NAL Me 
ie A 
OL Be 
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Pa 

i b ¥ 

ay is 
oe 








“ As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent remains 
So Men pass on; but the States remain permanent for ever.” 
BLAKE, “ Jerusalem.” 


CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 


Our object is to describe the normal development of mystic consciousness—Its 
difficulty—Mystics differ enormously from one another—No one mystic completely 
typical— A ‘‘composite portrait ’ necessary —Its characteristics —— The developing 
mystic consciousness oscillates between pain and pleasure states—Its growth is a 
continuous transcendence—-Five great stages: 1. Awakening or Conversion ; 2. Self- 
knowledge or Purgation ; 3. Illumination ; 4. Surrender, or the Dark Night; 
5. Union—Distinction between Union and Ecstasy—Unitive Life the goal of the 
Mystic Way—Annihilation of Self the end of Oriental Mysticism—Christian Mysticism 
denies this interpretation of Union—Finds in it the enhancement not the suppression 
of life—The Divine Dark—The true Unitive Life active—A state of Divine 
Fecundity—The ‘‘ great actives”—Their dual character of action and fruition—St. 
Catherine of Siena—The proper end of the Mystic Way is Deification 


E are now to turn from general principles and study 
\ V those principles in action: to describe the- psycho- 
logical process, or “ Mystic Way,” by which that 
peculiar type of personality which is able to set up direct 
relations with the Absolute is usually developed. The difficulty 
of this description will lie in the fact that all mystics differ 
one from another ; as all the individual objects of our perception, 
“living” and “not living,’ do. The creative impulse in the 
world, so far as we are aware of it, appears upon ultimate 
analysis to be free and original, not bound and mechanical: to 
express itself, in defiance of the determinists, with a certain 
artistic spontaneity. Man, when he picks out some point of 
likeness as a basis on which to arrange its productions in groups, 
is not discovering its methods; but merely making for his own 
convenience an arbitrary choice of one or two—not necessarily 
characteristic—qualities, which happen to appear in a certain 
number of different persons or things. Hence the most 
scientific classification is a rough-and-ready business at the 
best. 


203 


204 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


When we come to apply such a classification to so delicate 
and elusive a series of psychological states as those which 
accompany the “contemplative life,” all the usual difficulties 
seem to be enormously increased. No one mystic can be 
discovered in whom all the observed characteristics of the 
transcendental consciousness are resumed, and who can on that 
account be treated as typical. Mental states which are distinct 
and mutually exclusive in one case, exist simultaneously in 
another. In some, stages which have been regarded as essential 
are entirely omitted: in others, their order appears to be 
reversed. We seem at first to be confronted by a group of 
selves which arrive at the same end without obeying any 
general law. 

Take, however, a number of such definitely mystical selves 
and make of them, so to speak, a “composite portrait”: as 
anthropologists do when they wish to discover the character of 
a race. From this portrait we may expect a type to emerge, 
in which all the outstanding characteristics contributed by the 
individual examples are present together, and minor variations 
are suppressed. Such a portrait will of course be conventional : 
but it will be useful as a standard, which can be constantly 
compared with, and corrected by, isolated specimens. 

The first thing we notice about this composite portrait is 
that the typical mystic seems to move towards his goal through 
a series of strongly marked oscillations between “states of 
pleasure” and “states of pain.” The existence and succession 
of these states—sometimes broken and confused, sometimes 
crisply defined—can be traced, to a greater or less degree, in 
almost every case of which we possess anything like a detailed 
record. Gyrans gyrando vadit spiritus. The soul, as it - 
treads the ascending spiral of its road towards reality, expe- 
riences alternately the sunshine and the shade. These 
experiences are “constants” of the transcendental life. “ The 
Spiritual States of the Soul are all Eternal,” said Blake, with 
the true mystical genius for psychology. 

The complete series of these states—and it must not be 
forgotten that few individuals present them all in perfection, 
whilst in many instances several are blurred or appear to be 
completely suppressed—will be, I think, most conveniently 

* ©‘ Jerusalem,” pt. iii, 


INTRODUCTORY 205 


arranged under five heads. This method of grouping means, 
of course, the abandonment of the time-honoured threefold 
division of the Mystic Way, and the apparent neglect of 
St. Teresa’s equally celebrated Seven Degrees of Contemplation; 
but I think that we shall gain more than we lose by adopting 
it. The groups, however, must be looked upon throughout as 
diagrammatic, and only as answering loosely and generally 
to experiences which seldom present themselves in so rigid 
and unmixed a form. These experiences, largely conditioned 
as they are by surroundings and by temperament, exhibit all 
the variety and spontaneity which are characteristic of life 
in its highest manifestations: and, like biological specimens, 
they lose something of their essential reality in being prepared 
for scientific investigation. Taken all together, they constitute 
one continuous process of transcendence: the movement’ of 
consciousness from lower to higher levels of reality, the steady 
remaking of character in accordance with the “independent 
spiritual world.” But as the study of physical life is made 
easier for us by an artificial division into infancy, adolescence, 
maturity, and old age, so a discreet indulgence of the human 
passion for map-making will materially increase our chances 
of understanding the nature of the Mystic Way. 

Here, then, is the somewhat arbitrary classification under 
which we shall study the phases of the mystical life. 

(1) The awakening of the Self to consciousness of Divine 
Reality. This experience, usually abrupt and well-marked, 
is accompanied by intense feelings of joy and exaltation. 

(2) The Self, aware for the first time of Divine Beauty, 
realizes by contrast its own finiteness and imperfection, the 
manifold illusions in which it is immersed, the immense distance 
which separates it from the One. Its attempts to eliminate — 
by discipline and mortification all that stands in the way of 
its progress towards union with God constitute Purgation: 
a state of pain and effort. 

(3) When by Purgation the Self has become detached from 
the “things of sense,’ and acquired the “ornaments of the 
spiritual marriage,” its joyful consciousness of the Transcendent 
Order returns in an enhanced form. Like the prisoners in Plato’s 
“Cave of Illusion,” it has awakened to knowledge of Reality, 
has struggled up the harsh and difficult path to the mouth 


206 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of the cave. Now it looks upon the sun. This is //umzna- 
tion: a state which includes in itself many of the stages of 
contemplation, “degrees of orison,”’ visions and adventures 
of the soul described by St. Teresa and other mystical 
writers. These form, as it were, a way within the Way: 
a moyen de parvenir, a training devised by experts which 
will strengthen and assist the mounting soul. They stand, 
so to speak, for education ; whilst the Way proper repre- 
sents organic growth. Illumination is the “contemplative 
state” par excellence. It forms, with the two preceding 
states, the “ first mystic life” Many mystics never go beyond 
it; and, on the other hand, many seers-and artists not 
usually classed amongst them, have tasted, to some extent, 
the splendours of the illuminated state. It entails a vision 
of the Absolute: a sense of the Divine Presence: but not 
true union with it. It is a state of happiness. 

(4) In the development of the great and strenuous seekers 
after God, this is followed—or sometimes intermittently 
accompanied—by the most terrible of all the experiences of 
the Mystic Way: the last and most complete purification of 
the Self, which is called by some contemplatives the “ Mystic 
pain” or “Mystic death,’ by others the Dark Night of the 
Soul, The consciousness which had, in Illumination, sunned 


itself in the sense of the Divine Presence, now suffers under — 


an equally intense sense of the Divine Absence: learning to 
dissociate the personal satisfaction of mystical vision from the 
reality of mystical life. As in Purgation the senses were 
cleansed and humbled, and the energies and interests of the 
Self were concentrated upon transcendental things: so now 
the purifying process is extended to the very centre of 
I-hood, the will. The human instinct for personal happiness 
must be killed. This is the “spiritual crucifixion” so often 
described by the mvstics: the great desolation in which the 
soul seems abandoned by the Divine. The Self now sur- 


renders itself, its individuality, and its will, completely. It 


desires nothing, asks nothing, is utterly passive, and is thus 
prepared for 

(5) Union: the true goal of the mystic quest. In this 
state the Absolute Life is not merely perceived and enjoyed 
by the Self, as in Illumination: but is ome with it. This is 


————— ee 


INTRODUCTORY 207 


the end towards which all the previous oscillations of con- 
sciousness have tended. It is a state of equilibrium, of purely 
spiritual life ; characterized by peaceful joy, by enhanced powers, 
by intense certitude. To call this state, as some authorities 
do, by the name of Ecstasy, is inaccurate and confusing: since 
the term Ecstasy has long been used both by psychologists 
and ascetic writers to define that short and rapturous trance 
—a state with well-marked physical and psychical accompani- 
ments—in which the contemplative, losing all consciousness 
of the phenomenal world, is caught up to a brief and immediate 
enjoyment of the Divine Vision. Ecstasies of this kind are 
often experienced by the mystic in Illumination, or even on 
his first conversion. They cannot therefore be regarded as 
exclusively characteristic of the Unitive Way. In some, 
indeed—St. Teresa is an example—the ecstatic trance seems 
to diminish rather than increase in frequency after the state 
of union has been attained. 

Union must be looked upon as the true end of mystical 
education, the permanent condition of life upon transcendent 
levels of reality, of which ecstasies give a foretaste to the soul. 
Intense forms of it, described by individual mystics, under 
symbols such as those of Mystical Marriage, Deification, or 
Divine Fecundity, all prove on examination to be aspects of 
this same experience “seen through a temperament.” 

It is right, however, to state here that Oriental Mysticism 
insists upon a further stage beyond that of union, which stage 
it regards as the real goal of the spiritual life. This is the total 
annihilation or reabsorption of the individual soul in the 
Infinite. Such an annihilation is said by the Sifis to con- 
stitute the “Eighth Stage of Progress,’ in which alone they 
truly attain to God. Thus stated it appears to differ little 
from the Buddhist’s Nirvana, and is the logical corollary of 
that pantheism to which the Oriental mystic always tends. 
It is at least doubtful, however, whether the interpretation 
which has been put upon it by European students be correct. 
The passage in which Al Ghazzali attempts to describe it is 
certainly more applicable to the Unitive Life as understood 
by Christian contemplatives, than to the Buddhistic annihilation 
of personality. “The end of Sidfi-ism,” he says, “is total 
absorption in God. This is at least the relative end to that 


208 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


part of their doctrine which I am free to reveal and describe. 
But zm reality it ts but the beginning of the Sifi life, for those 
intuitions and other things which precede it are, so to speak, 
but the porch by which they enter. ... In this state some 
have imagined themselves to be amalgamated with God, others 
to be identical with Him, others again to be associated with 
Him: but ad/ this zs sin.” * 

The doctrine of annihilation as the end of the soul’s ascent, 
whatever the truth may be as to the Moslem attitude con- 
cerning it, is decisively rejected by all European mystics, 
though a belief in it is constantly imputed to them by their 
enemies: for their aim is not the suppression of life, but its 
intensification, a change in its form. This change, they say 
in a paradox which is generally misunderstood, consists in 
the perfecting of personality by the utter surrender of self. 
It is true that the more Orientally-minded amongst them, 
such as Dionysius the Areopagite, do use language of a negative 
kind which seems almost to involve a belief in the annihila- 
tion rather than the transformation of the self in God: but this 
is because they are trying to describe a condition of super- 
sensible vitality from the point of view of the normal con- 
sciousness, to which it can only seem a Nothing, a Dark, 
a Self-loss. Further, it will be found that this temperamental 
language is generally an attempt to describe the conditions 
of transitory perception, not those of permanent existence: 


the characteristics, that is to say, of the Ecstatic Trance, in — 


which for a short time the whole self is lifted to tran- 
scendent levels, and the Absolute is apprehended by a total 
suspension of the surface consciousness. 

Hence the Divine Dark, the Nothing, is not a state of non- 
- being to which the mystic aspires to attain: it is rather an 
approximate and imperfect name for his consciousness of that Un- 
differentiated Godhead, that Supernal Light whence he may, in 
his ecstasies, bring down fire from heaven to light the world. 

In the mystics of the West, the highest forms of Divine 
Union impel the self to some sort of active, rather than of 


passive life: and this is now recognized by the best authorities — 


as the true distinction between Christian and non-Christian 
mysticism. “The Christian mystics,’ says Delacroix, “move 


* Schmolders, ‘‘ Les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes,” p. 61 


—— 
_— 


<a 


INTRODUCTORY 209 


from the Infinite to the Definite; they aspire to infinitize life 
and to define Infinity ; they go from the conscious to the sub- 
conscious, and from the subconscious to the conscious. The 
obstacle in their path is not consciousness in general, but sed 
consciousness, the consciousness of the Ego. The Ego is the 


limitation, that which opposes itself to the Infinite: the states of . 


consciousness free from self, lost in a vaster consciousness, may 
become modes of the Infinite, and states of the Divine Conscious- 
- ness.”! So Starbuck: “The individual learns to transfer him- 


' self frorn a centre of self-activity into an organ of revelation of - 


universal being, and to live a life of affection for and one-ness 
with, the larger life outside.” 2 
Hence, the ideal of the great contemplatives, the end of their 


long education, is to become “modes of the Infinite.” Filled ~ 


with an abounding sense of the Divine Life, of ultimate and 
adorable reality, sustaining and urging them on, they wish to 


communicate the revelation, the more abundant life, which they — 


have received. Not spiritual marriage, but divine fecundity is to 
be their final state. In a sense St. Teresa in the Seventh 
Habitation, Suso when his great renunciation is made, have 
achieved the quest ; yet there is nothing passive in the condition 
to which they have come. Not Galahad, but the Grail-bearer 
is now their type: and in their life, words or works they are 
impelled to exhibit that “ Hidden Treasure which desires to be 
found.” 

“You may think, my daughters,” says St. Teresa, “that the 


soul in this state [of union] should be so absorbed that she can - 


occupy herself with nothing. You deceive yourselves. She 


turns with greater ease and ardour than before to all that which , 


belongs to the service of God, and when these occupations leave 
her free again, she remains in the enjoyment of that com- 
_ panionship.” 3 

No temperament is less slothful than the mystical one ; and 
the “quiet” to which the mystics must school themselves in the 
early stages of contemplation is often the hardest of their tasks. 
The abandonment of bodily and intellectual activity is only 
undertaken in order that they may, in the words of Plotinus, 


“ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,”’ p. 235. 

‘* The Psychology of Religion,” p. 147. 

‘* El Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sétimas, cap. i. 
P ‘ 


os) 


— 


210 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


“energize enthusiastically” upon another plane. Work they 
must: but this work may take many forms—forms which are 
sometimes so wholly spiritual that they are not perceptibie to 
practical minds. Much of the misunderstanding and consequent 
contempt of the contemplative life comes from the narrow and 
superficial definition of “ work” which is set up by a muscular 
and wage-earning community. 

All records of mysticism in the West, then, are also the 
records of supreme human activity. Not only of “wrestlers in 
the spirit” but also of great organizers, such as St. Teresa and 
St. John of the Cross; of missionaries preaching life to the 
Spiritually dead, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius 
Loyola, Eckhart, Suso, Tauler, Fox; of philanthropists, such as 
St. Catherine of Genoa; poets and prophets, such as Mechthild 
of Magdeburg, Jacopone da Todi and Blake; finally, of some 
immensely virile souls whose participation in the Absolute Life 
has seemed to force on them a national destiny. Of this 
St. Bernard, St. Catherine of Siena, and the Blessed Joan of 
Arc are the supreme examples. “The soul enamoured of My 
Truth,” said God’s voice to St. Catherine of Siena, “ never ceases 
to serve the whole world in general.” = 

Utterly remade in the interests of Reality, exhibiting 
that dual condition of fruition and activity which Ruysbroeck 
described as the crowning stage of human evolution, the 
“Supreme summit of the Inner Life,’2 all these lived, as it 
were, with both hands; towards the finite and towards the 
Infinite, towards God and man. It is true that in nearly 
every case such “great actives” have first left the world 
as a necessary condition of obtaining contact with that Abso- — 
lute Life which reinforced their own: for a mind distracted 
by the many cannot apprehend the One. Hence the solitude of — 
the wilderness is an essential part of mystical education. But, | 
having obtained that contact, and established themselves upon 
transcendent levels—being united with their Source not merely 
in temporary ecstasies, but by an act of complete surrender— 
they were impelled to abandon their solitude; and resumed, in 
some way, their contact with the world in order to become the 
medium whereby that Life flowed out to other men. To go up 

* Dialogo, cap. vii. 
2 “€TOrnement des Noces Spirituelles,’’ 1. ii. cap. Ixxiii. 





. INTRODUCTORY . 211 


alone into the mountain and come back as an ambassador to the 
world, has ever been the method of humanity’s best friends. 
This systole-and-diastole motion of retreat as the preliminary to 
a return remains the true ideal of Christian Mysticism in its 
highest development. Those in whom it is not found, however 
great in other respects they may be, must be considered as 
having stopped short of the final stage. 

Thus St. Catherine of Siena spent three years in hermit-like 
seclusion in the little room which we still see in her house in the 
Via Benincasa, entirely cut off from the ordinary life of her 
family. ‘“ Within her own house,” says her legend, “she found 
the desert; and a solitude in the midst of people.”! There 
Catherine endured many mortifications, was visited by ecstasies 
and visions: passed, in fact, through the states of Purgation afd 
Illumination, which existed in her case side by side. This life 
of solitude was brought to an abrupt end by the experience 
which is symbolized in the vision of the Mystic Marriage, and 
the Voice which then said to her, “Now will I wed thy soul, 
which shall ever be conjoined and united to Me!” Catherine, 
who had during her long retreat enjoyed illumination to a high 
degree, now entered upon the Unitive State, in which the whole 
of her public life was passed. Its effect was immediately 
noticeable. She abandoned her solitude, joined in the family 
life, went out into the city to serve the poor and sick, attracted 
and taught disciples, converted sinners, and began that career of 
varied and boundless activity which has made her name one of 
the greatest in the history of the fourteenth century. Nor does 
this mean that she ceased to live the sort of life which is 
characteristic of mystical consciousness: to experience direct 
contact with the Transcendental World, to gaze into “ the Abyss 
of Love Divine.” On the contrary her astonishing practical 
genius for affairs, her immense power of ruling men, drew its 
strength from the long series of visions and ecstasies which 
-accompanied and supported her labours in the world. She 
“ descended into the valley of lilies to make herself more fruitful,” 
says her legend.2 The conscious vehicle of some “power 
not herself,’ she spoke and acted with an authority which 
might have seemed strange enough in an uneducated daughter 


* E. Gardner, ‘‘ St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 15. 
2 S. Catherinae Senensis Vitae (Acta SS. Aprilis t. iii.), ii. ii. § 4. 


212 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of the people, were it not justified by the fact that all who came 
into contact with her submitted to its influence. 

Our business, then, is to trace from its beginning a gradual 
and complete change in the equilibrium of the self. It isa 
change whereby that self turns from the unreal world of sense 
in which it is normally immersed, first to apprehend, then to unite 
itself with Absolute Reality: finally, possessed by and wholly 


_ surrendered to this Transcendent Life, becomes a medium | 


_ whereby the spiritual world is seen in a unique degree operating 
directly in the world of sense. In other words, we are to see 
the human mind advance from the mere perception of 
phenomena, through the intuition—with occasional contact—of 
the Absolute under its aspect of Divine Transcendence, to the 
efitire realization of, and union with, Absolute Life under its 
aspect of Divine Immanence. 
The completed mystical life, then, is more than intuitional: 

it is theopathetic. In the old, frank language of the mystics, it 
is the betel life. 


CHAPTER II 
THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 


The awakening of transcendental consciousness—Psychologically it is a form of 
conversion—Generally abrupt—Sometimes gradual—George Fox—An_ ineffable 
revelation—A vision of the Divine immanent in the world—General characteristics 
of mystic conversion—Instances—St. Francis of Assisi—The typical mystic—St. 
Catherine of Genoa—Madame Guyon—Her character—Her early life and conversion 
—Rulman Merswin—Suso—Ecstatic conversion—Pascal—Brother Lawrence—The 
perception of Divine Reality in Nature—The ‘‘transfigured world ’—Instances— 
Walt Whitman—Richard Jefferies—Richard Rolle—Heavenly Song—Conversion 
may take two forms : (1) Expansive and Transcendent; (2) Personal and Immanent— 
Their characteristics discussed and compared—Personal love the essential factor—The 
stimulus which sets the process of transcendence to work 


consider that decisive event, the awakening of the 
transcendental consciousness. 

This awakening, from the psychological point of view, 
appears to be an intense form of the much-discussed phenomenon 
of “conversion.” Jn particular, it is closely akin to those deep 
and permanent conversions of the adult type which some 
religious psychologists call “sanctification.”* It is a disturb- 
ance of the equilibrium of the self, which results in the shifting 
of the field of consciousness from lower to higher levels, with a 
consequent removal of the centre of interest from the subject to 
an object now brought into view: the necessary beginning of 
any process of transcendence. It must not, however, be con- 
fused or identified with religious conversion as ordinarily under- 
stood: the sudden and emotional acceptance of theological 
beliefs which the self had previously either rejected or treated 
as conventions dwelling upon the margin of consciousness and 
having no meaning for her actual life. The mechanical process 


| ee in the sequence of the mystic states, we must 


* See Starbuck, ‘‘ The Psychology of Religion,” cap. xxix. 


213 


214 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


may be much the same; but the material involved, the results 
attained, belong to a higher order of reality. 

“Conversion,” says Starbuck, in words which are really far 
more descriptive of mystical awakening than of the revivalistic 
phenomena encouraged by American Protestantism, “is 
primarily an unselfing. The first birth of the individual is 
into his own little world. He is controlled by the deep-seated 
instincts of self-preservation and self-enlargement—instincts 
which are, doubtless, a direct inheritance from his brute 
ancestry. The universe is organized around his own personality 
as acentre.” Conversion, then, is “the larger world-conscious- 
ness now pressing in on the individual consciousness. Often it 
breaks in suddenly and becomes a great new revelation. This 
is the first aspect of conversion: the person emerges from a 
smaller limited world of existence into a larger world of being. 
His life becomes swallowed up in a larger whole.” * 

All conversion entails the abrupt or gradual emergence of 
intuitions from below the threshold, the consequent remaking 
of the field of consciousness, an alteration in the self’s attitude 
to the world. But in the mystic this process is raised to the 
nth degree of intensity, for in him it.means the first emergence 
of that genius for the Absolute which is to constitute his dis- 
tinctive character: an emergence enormous in its effect on 
every department of his life. Those to whom it happens, often 
enough, are already “religious”: sometimes deeply and 
earnestly so. Rulman Merswin, St. Catherine of Genoa, 
Madame Guyon, George Fox—all these had been bred up 
in piety, and accepted in its entirety the Christian tradition. 
They were none the less conscious of an utter change in their 
world when this opening of the soul’s eye took place. 


Sometimes the emergence of the mystical consciousness is 


cradual, unmarked by any definite crisis. The self slides 
gently, almost imperceptibly, from the old universe to the new. 
The records of mysticism, however, seem to suggest that this 
is exceptional: that travail is the normal accompaniment of 
birth. In another type, of which George Fox is a typical 
example, there is no conversion in the ordinary sense; but a 
gradual and increasing lucidity, of which the beginning has 
hardly been noticed by the self, intermittently accompanies the 
* OD. cét., Cap. Xil. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 215 


pain, misery of mind, and inward struggles characteristic of the 
entrance upon the Way of Purgation. Conversion and purifica- 
tion then go hand in hand, finally shading off into the serenity 
of the Illuminated State. Fox’s “Journal” for the year 1647 
contains a vivid account of these “showings” or growing tran- 
scendental perceptions of a mind not yet at one with itself, and 
struggling towards clearness of sight. “Though my exercises 
and troubles,” he says, “were very great, yet were they not so 
continual but I had some intermissions, and was sometimes 
brought into such a heavenly joy that I thought I had been in 
Abraham’s bosom. ... Thus in the deepest miseries, and in 
the greatest sorrows and temptations that many times beset me, 
the Lord in His mercy did keep me. I found that there were 
two thirsts in me; the one after the creatures to get help and 
strength there; and the other after the Lord, the Creator... .. 
It was so with me, that there seemed to be two pleadings in me. 
_.. One day when I had been walking solitarily abroad and 
was come home, I was wrapped up in the love of God, so that I 
could not but admire the greatness of his love. While I was 
in that condition it was opened unto me by the eternal Light 
and Power, and I saw clearly therein. ... But O! then did I 
see my troubles, trials, and temptations more clearly than ever 
I had done.” ! 

The great oscillations of the typical mystic between joy and 
pain are here replaced by a number of little ones. The “ two 
thirsts” of the superficial and spiritual consciousness assert 
themselves by turns. Each step towards the vision of the Real 
brings with it a reaction. The nascent transcendental powers 
are easily fatigued, and the pendulum of self takes a shorter 
swing. “I was swept up to Thee by Thy Beauty, and torn 
away from Thee by my own weight,” says St. Augustine, 
crystallizing the secret of this experience in an unforgettable 
phrase.? 

Most often, however, if we may judge from those first-hand 
accounts which we possess, mystic conversion is a single and 
abrupt experience, sharply marked off from the long, dim 
struggles which precede and succeed it. Normally, it takes 
the form of a sudden and acute realization of a splendour and 
adorable reality in the world—or sometimes of its obverse, the 


* Journal of George Fox, cap. i, ? Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. xvii. 


216 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


divine sorrow at the heart of things—never before perceived. 
In so far as I am acquainted with the resources of language, 
there are no words in which this realization can be described. 
It is of so actual a nature that in comparison the normal world 
of past perception seems but twilit at the best. Conscious- 
ness has suddenly changed its rhythm and a new aspect of 
the universe rushes in. The teasing mists are swept away, and 
reveal, if only for an instant, the sharp outline of the Everlast- 
ing Hills. ‘“ He who knows this will know what I say, and will 
be convinced that the soul has then another life.” 1 

In most cases, the onset of this new consciousness seems to 
the self so sudden, so clearly imposed from without rather than 
developed from within, as to have a supernatural character. 
The typical case is, of course, that of St. Paul: the sudden 
light, the voice, the ecstasy, the complete alteration of life. 
We shall see, however, when we come to study the evidence of 
those mystics who have left a detailed record of their pre- 
converted state, that the apparently abrupt conversion is 
really, as a rule, the sequel and the result of a long period of 
restlessness, uncertainty, and mental stress. The deeper mind 
stirs uneasily in its prison, and its emergence is but the last of 
many efforts to escape. The temperament of the subject, his 
surroundings, the vague but persistent apprehensions of a super- 
sensual reality which he could not find yet could not forget ; 
all these have prepared him for it.2 

When, however, the subconscious intuitions, long ago 
quickened, are at last brought to birth and the eyes are opened 
on new light—and it is significant that an actual sense of blind- 
ing radiance is a constant accompaniment of this state of 
consciousness—the storm and stress, the vague cravings and 
oscillations of the past life are forgotten. In this abrupt 
recognition of reality “all things are made new”: from this 
point the life of the mystic begins. Conversion of this sort may 
be defined as a sudden, intense, and joyous perception of God 
immanent in the universe ; of the divine beauty and unutter- 
able splendour of that larger life in which the individual is 


t Plotinus, Ennead vi. 9. 

2 Compare St. Augustine’s Confessions, with their description of the years ot 
uncertainty and struggle which prepared him for the sudden and final ‘* Tolle, lege !” 
that initiated him into the long-sought life of Reality. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 217 


immersed, and of a new life to be lived by the self in corre- 
spondence with this now dominant fact of existence. The film 
of appearance is abruptly dissolved, and the eternal fairy fields 
are disclosed. For an instant the neophyte sees nature with the 
eyes of God. In that glorious moment “all is beauty ; and 
knowing this is love, and love is duty.” But all that is meant 
by such a statement as this only the mystics know ; and even 
they seem unable to tell. 

I will here set down for comparison a few instances of such 
mystical conversion ; quoting, where this is available, the actual 
description left by the subject of his own experience, or in 
default of it, the earliest authentic account. In these cases, 
when grouped together, we shall see certain constant charac- 
teristics, from which it may be possible to deduce the psycho- 
logical law to which they owe their peculiar form. 

First in point of time, and first perhaps also in importance 
amongst those which I have chosen, is the case of St. Francis of 
Assisi ; that great poet and contemplative, that impassioned 
lover of the Absolute, whom the unfortunate enthusiasm of his 
agnostic admirers has presented to the modern world as a 
celestial patron of the Socialist movement and the simple life. 
The fact that St. Francis wrote little and lived much, that his 
actions were of unequalled simplicity and directness, has 
blinded us to the fact that he is a typical mystic: the only 
one, perhaps, who forced the most trivial and sordid circum- 
stances of sensual life to become perfect expressions of Reality. 

Now the opening of St. Francis’s eyes, which took place in 
A.D. 1206 when he was twenty-four years old, had been preceded 
by a long, hard struggle between the life of the world and the 
persistent call of the spirit. His mind, in modern language, had 
not unified itself. He was a high-spirited boy, full of vitality: a 
natural artist, with all the fastidiousness which the artistic 
temperament involves. War and pleasure both attracted him, 
and upon them, says his legend, he “miserably squandered and 
wasted his time.” Nevertheless, he was vaguely dissatisfied. 
In the midst of festivities, he would have sudden fits of abstrac- 
tion : abortive attempts of the growing transcendental con- 
sciousness, still imprisoned below the threshold but aware of 
and in touch with the Real, to force itself to the surface and 


« Thomas of Celano, Legenda Prima, cap. i. 


218 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


seize the reins. “Even in ignorance,” says Thomas of Celano 
again, “he was being led to perfect knowledge.” He loved 
beauty, for he was by nature a poet and a musician, and shrank 
instinctively from contact with ugliness and disease. But some- 
thing within ran counter to this temperamental bias, and some- 
times conquered it. He would then associate with beggars, 
tend the leprous, perform impulsive acts of charity and self- 
humiliation.: 

When this divided state, described by the legend as “the— 
attempt to flee God’s hand,” had lasted for some years, it 
happened one day that he was walking in the country outside 
the gates of Assisi, and passed the little church of S. Damiano, 
“the which” (I again quote from Thomas of Celano’s “Second 
Life”) “was almost ruinous and forsaken of all men. And, 
being led by the Spirit, he went in to pray; and he fell down 
before the Crucifix in devout supplication, and having been 
smitten by unwonted visitations, found himself another man than 
he who had gone in.” 

Here, then, is the first stage of conversion. The struggle 
between two discrepant ideals of life has attained its term. A 

sudden. and apparently “irrational” impulse to some decisive 
act reaches the surface-consciousness from the seething deeps. 
The impulse is followed ; and the swift emergence of the 
transcendental sense results. This “unwonted visitation” 
effects an abrupt and involuntary alteration in the subject’s 
consciousness : whereby he literally “finds himself another 
man.” He is as one who slept and now awakes. 

The crystallization of this new, at first fluid apprehension of 
Reality in the form of vision and audition : the pointing of the 
moral, the direct application of truth to the awakened self, 
follows. “ And whilst he was thus moved, straightway—a thing 
unheard of for long ages!—the painted image of Christ Crucified 
spoke to him from out its pictured lips. And, calling him by 
his name, “ Francis,” it said, “ go, repair My house, the which as 
thou seest is falling into decay.” And Francis trembled, being 
utterly amazed, and almost as it were carried away by these 
words. And he prepared to obey, for he was wholly set on the 
fulfilling of this commandment. But /orasmuch as he felt that 


* Thomas of Celano, Legenda Secunda, cap. v. Compare P. Sabatier, ‘* Vie de 
6. Francois d’Assise,” cap. ii,, where the authorities are fully set out. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 219 


the change he had undergone was ineffable, it becomes us to be 
silent concerning it... .” From this time he “gave untiring 
toil to the repair of that Church. For though the words which 
were said to him concerned that divine Church which Christ 
bought with His own Blood, he would not hasten to such 
heights, but little by little from things of the flesh would pass 
to those of the Spirit.” 

In a moment of time, Francis’s whole universe had suffered 


_complete rearrangement. There are no hesitations, no uncer- 


tainties. The change, which he cannot describe, he knows to be 
central for life. Not fora moment does he think of disobeying 
the imperative voice which speaks to him from a higher plane 
of reality and demands the sacrifice of his career. 

Compare now with the experience of St. Francis that of 
another great saint and mystic, who combined, as he did, the 
active with the contemplative life. Catherine of Genoa, who 
seems to have possessed from childhood a religious nature, was 
prepared for the remaking of her consciousness by years of 
loneliness and depression, the result of an unhappy marriage. 
She, like St. Francis—but in sorrow rather than in joy—had 
oscillated between the world, which did not soothe her, and 
religion, which helped her no more. At last, she had sunk 
into a state of dull wretchedness, a hatred alike of herself and 
of life. 

Her emancipation was equally abrupt. In the year 1474, 
she being twenty-six years old, “The day after the feast of 
St. Benedict (at the instance of her sister that was a nun), 
Catherine went to make her confession to the confessor of that 
nunnery ; but she was not disposed to do it. Then said her 
sister, ‘ At least go and recommend yourself to him, because he 
is a most worthy religious’ ; and in fact he was a very holy 
man. And suddenly, as she knelt before him, she received 
in her heart the wound of the unmeasured Love of God, with so 


_ clear a vision of her own misery and her faults, and of the good- 
ness of God, that she almost fell upon the ground. And by 


these sensations of infinite love, and of the offences that had 
been done against this most sweet God, she was so greatly 
drawn by purifying affection away from the poor things of this 
world that she was almost beside herself, and for this she cried 


* Thomas of Celano, Legenda Secunda, cap. vi. 


220 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


inwardly with ardent love, ‘No more world! no more sin!’ 
And at this point, if she had possessed a thousand worlds, she 
would have thrown all of them away. ... And she returned 
home, kindled and deeply wounded with so great a love of God, 
the which had been shown her inwardly, with the sight of her 
own wretchedness, that she seemed beside herself. And she 
shut herself in a chamber, the most secluded she could find, 
with burning sighs. And in this moment she was inwardly 
taught the whole practice of orison: but her tongue could say 
naught but this—‘ O Love, can it be that thou hast called me 
with so great a love, and made me to know in one instant that 
which worlds cannot express?’” This intuition of the Absolute 
was followed by an interior vision of Christ bearing the Cross, 
which further increased her love and self-abasement. “ And 
she cried again, ‘O Love, no more sins! no more sins!’ And 
her hatred of herself was more than she could endure.” ? 

Of this experience Von Hiigel says, “If the tests of reality 
in such things are their persistence and large and rich spiritual 
applicability and fruitfulness, then something profoundly real 
and important took place in the soul of that sad and weary 
woman of six-and-twenty, within that convent-chapel, at that 
Annunciation-tide.”2 It is very certain that for St. Catherine, 
as for St. Francis, an utterly new life did, literally, begin at this 
point. The centre of interest was shifted and the field of 
consciousness remade. She “knew in an instant that which 
words cannot express.” Some veil about her heart was torn 
away; so abruptly, that it left a wound behind. For the first 
time she saw and knew the Love in which life is bathed; and 
all the energy and passion of a strong nature responded to 
its call. 

The conversion of Madame Guyon to the mystic life, as 
told by herself in the eighth chapter of part i. of her auto- 
biography—“ How a holy Religious caused her to find God 
within her heart, with Admirable Results,” is its characteristic 
title—is curiously like a dilute version of this experience of 
St. Catherine’s. It, too, followed upon a period of great mental 
distress ; also the result of an uncongenial marriage. But since 
Madame Guyon’s rather unbalanced, diffuse, and sentimental 


* “ Vita e Dottrina di Santa Caterina da Genova,” cap. ii. 
® Von{Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. ii. p. 29. 


ae 


HE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 994 


character lacks the richness and dignity, the repressed ardours 
and exquisite delicacy of St. Catherine’s mind, so, too, her 
account of her own interior processes is too often marred by a 
terrible and unctuous interest in the peculiar graces vouchsafed 
‘to her. 

Madame Guyon’s value to the student of mysticism consists 
largely in this feeble quality of her surface-intelligence, which 
hence had little or no modifying or contributory effect upon her 
spiritual life. True to her own great principle of passivity or 
“quiet,” it lets the interior impulses have their way; and thus 
we are able in her case to observe their workings with unusual 
ease, uncomplicated by the presence of a vigorous intellect 
or a disciplined will. The wind that bloweth where it listeth 
whistles through her soul: and the response which she makes 
is that of a weathercock rather than a windmill. She moves 
to every current; she often mistakes a draught for the divine 
breath ; she feels her gyrations to be of enormous importance. 
But when it comes to the description of her awakening to the 
deeper life, a genuine intensity of feeling endows even her 
effusive style with a certain dignity. 

Madame Guyon had from her childhood exhibited an almost 
tiresome taste for pious observances. At twelve years old she 
studied St. Francois de Sales and St. Jeanne Francoise de 
Chantal; begged her confessor to teach her the art of mental 
prayer; and when he omitted to do so, tried to teach herself, 
but without result.2 She wished at this time to become a nun 
in Madame de Chantal’s Order of the Visitation, as St. Catherine 
at the same age wanted to be an Augustinian canoness ; but as 
the longings of little girls of twelve for the cloister are seldom 
taken seriously, we are not surprised to find the refusal of her 
parents’ consent chronicled in the chapter which is headed 


™ It is clear from the heading of cap. x. (pt. i.) of her Autobiography that 
Madame Guyon’s editors were .conscious, if she was not, of at least some of the 
extraordinary coincidences between her experiences and those of St. Catherine of 
Genoa. The parallel between their early years in particular is so exact and descends 
to such minute details that I am inclined to think that the knowledge of this resem- 
blance, and the gratification with which she would naturally regard it, has governed 
or modified some at any rate amongst her memories of this past. Such modifications, 
probably involuntary, have resuited in a curious and hitherto unnoticed case of 
** unconscious spiritual plagiarism.” 
* Vie, pt. i. cap. iv. 
i) 4 


222 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


“ Diverses croix chez M.son pere.’ Growing up into an unusually © 
beautiful young woman, she went into society, and for a short 
time enjoyed life in an almost worldly way. Her marriage 
with Jacques Guyon, however—a marriage of which she signed 
the articles without even being told the bridegroom’s name— 
put an end to her gaiety. “The whole town was pleased by 
this marriage; and in all this rejoicing only I was sad... 
hardly was I married, when the remembrance of my old desire 
to be a nun overcame me.”! 

Her early married life in her mother-in-law’s house was 
excessively unhappy. She was soon driven to look for com- 
fort in the practices of religion. “Made to love much, and 
finding nothing to love around her, she gave her love to God, 
says Guerrier tersely.2 But she was not. satisfied: like most 
of her fellow-contemplatives, she was already vaguely con- 
scious of something that she missed, some vital power unused, 
and identified this something with the “ orison of quiet,” 
the “practice of the presence of God” which mystically 
minded friends had described to her. She tried to attain to 
it deliberately, and naturally failed. ‘I could not give myself 
by multiplicity that which Thou Thyself givest, and which is 
only experienced in simplicity.” 3 

When these interior struggles had lasted for nearly two 
years, and Madame Guyon was nineteen, the long desired, 
almost despaired of, apprehension came—as it did to St. 
Catherine—suddenly, magically almost; and under curiously 
parallel conditions. It was the result of a few words spoken 
by a Franciscan friar whom a “secret force” acting in her 
interest had brought into the neighbourhood, and whom she 
had been advised to consult. He was a recluse, who disliked 
hearing the confessions of women, and appears to have been 
far from pleased by her visit ; an annoyance which he after- 
wards attributed to her fashionable appearance, “which filled 
him with apprehension.” “He hardly came forward, and was 
a long time without speaking to me. I, however, did not fail 
to speak to him and to tell him in a few words my difficulties 
on the subject of orison. He at once replied, ‘Madame, you 
are seeking without that which you have within. Accustom 


* Op. cit., pt. i. cap. vi. 2 © Madame Guyon,” p. 36. 
$ Vie, pt. i. cap. viii. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 223 


yourself to seek God in your own heart, and you will find 
Him.’ Having said this, he left me. The next morning he 
was greatly astonished when I again visited him and told him 
the effect which these words had had upon my soul: for, indeed, 
they were as an arrow, which pierced my heart through and 
through. I felt in this moment a profound wound, which was 
full of delight and of love—a wound so sweet that I desired 
that it might never heal. These words had put into my heart 
that which I sought for so many years, or, rather, they caused 
me to find that which was there. O, my Lord, you were within 
my heart, and you asked of me only that I should return within, 
in order that I might feel your presence. O, Infinite Goodness, 
you were so near, and I, running here and there to seek you, 
found you not!” She, too, like St. Catherine, learned in this 
instant the long-sought practice of orison, or contemplation. 
“From the moment of which I have spoken, my orison was 
emptied of all form, species, and images ; nothing of my orison 
passed through the mind; but it was an orison of joyous 
possession in the Will, where the taste for God was so great, 
pure, and simple that it attracted and absorbed the two other 
powers of the soul in a profound recollection without action 
or speech.” ! 

Take now the case of a less eminent but not less genuine 
mystic, who has also left behind him a vivid personal description 
of his entrance upon the Mystic Way. Rulman Merswin was a 
wealthy, pious, and respected merchant of Strassburg. In the 
year 1347, when he was about thirty-six years old, he retired 
from business in order that he might wholly devote himself to 
religious matters. It was the time of that spiritual revival 
within the Catholic Church in Germany which, largely in- 
fluenced by the great Rhenish mystics Suso and Tauler, is 
identified with the “Friends of God”; and Merswin himself 
was one of Tauler’s disciples.? 

One evening, in the autumn which followed his retirement, 
“about the time of Martinmas,” he was strolling in his garden 
alone. Meditating as he walked, a picture of the Crucifix 


1 Op. cét., loc. cet. 

2 One of the best English accounts of this movement and the great personalities 
concerned in it will be found in Rufus Jones, ‘‘ Studies in Mystical Religion,” 
cap. Xxili. 


224. AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


suddenly presented itself to his mind. In such an imaginary 
vision as this there is nothing, of course, that can be called 
in the least degree abnormal. The thoughts of a devout 
Catholic, much under the influence of Tauler and his school, 
must often have taken such a direction during his solitary strolls. 
This time, however, the mental image of the Cross seems 
to have given the needed stimulus to subconscious forces 
which had long been gathering way. Merswin was abruptly 
filled with a violent hatred of the world and of his own free-will. 
“Lifting his eyes to heaven he solemnly swore that he would 
utterly surrender his own will, person, and goods to the service 
of God.” 

This act of complete surrender, releasing as it were the 
earthbound self, was at once followed by the onset of pure 
mystical perception. “The reply from on high came quickly. 
A brilliant light shone about him: he heard in his ears a divine 
voice of adorable sweetness ; he felt as if he were lifted from the 
ground and carried several times completely round his garden.” 2 
Optical disturbance, auditions, and the sense of levitation, are 
of course well-marked physical accompaniments of these shift- 
ings of the level of consciousness. There are few cases in 
which one or other is not present; and in some we find all. 
Coming to himself after this experience, Merswin’s heart was 
filled by a new consciousness of the Divine, and by a transport 


t A. Jundt, “Rulman Merswin,” p. 19. M. Jundt has condensed his account, 
which I here translate, from Merswin’s autobiographical story of his conversion, 
published in Beztrdge zu den theologischen Wissenschaften, v. (Jena, 1854). Our 
whole knowledge of Merswin’s existence depends on the group of documents which 
includes this confession, the **‘ Book of Two Men,” the ‘‘ Vision of Nine Rocks,” 
and his other reputed works. The authenticity of these documents has been much 
questioned of recent years, and there can be little doubt that they have suffered 
severely from the editorial energy of his followers. Some critics go so far as to 
regard them as pious fictions useless as evidence of the incidents of Merswin life. With 
this view, which is upheld by Kar] Reider (Der Gottesfreund von Oberland, 1905), I 
cannot agree. The best solution of the many difficulties seems to me to be that 
involved in the brilliant hypothesis of M. Jundt, who believes that we have in Merswin 
and the mysterious “ Friend of God of the Oberland,” who pervades his spiritual 
career, a remarkable case of dissociated personality. Merswin’s peculiar psychic 
make-up, as described in his autobiography, supports this view: the adoption 
of which I shall take for granted in future references to his life. It is incredible 
tc me that the vivid account of his conversion which I quote should be merely 
‘*tendency-literature,’ without basis in fact. Compare Jundt’s monograph, and 
also Rufus Jones, of. cit. pp. 245-253, where the whole problem is discussed. 

? Jundt, of. ctt., loc. cst. 


a — 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 225 


of intense love towards God which made him undertake with 
great energy the acts of mortification which he believed 
necessary to the purification of his soul. From this time 
onwards, his mystical consciousness steadily developed. That 
it was a consciousness wholly different in kind from the sincere 
piety which had previously caused him to retire from business 
in order to devote himself to religious truth, is proved by 
the name of Conversion which he applies to the vision of the 
garden; and by the fact that he dates from this point the 
beginning of his real life. 

The conversion of Merswin’s greater contemporary, Suso, 
seems to have been less abrupt. Of its first stage he speaks 
vaguely at the beginning of his autobiography, wherein he says 
that “he began to be converted when in the eighteenth year 
of his age.” He was at this time, as St. Francis had been, 
restless, dissatisfied ; vaguely conscious of something essential 
to his peace, as yet unfound. His temperament, at once deeply 
human and ardently spiritual, passionately appreciative of 
sensuous beauty yet unable to rest in it, had not “unified it- 
self”: nor did it do so completely until after a period of purga- 
tion which is probably unequalled for its austerity in the 
history of the mysticism of the West. “He was kept of God in 
this, that when he turned to those things that most enticed him 
he found neither happiness nor peace therein. He was restless, 
and it seemed to him that something which was as yet un- 
known could alone give peace to his heart. And he suffered 
sreatly of this restlessness. ... God at last delivered him by 
a complete conversion. His brothers in religion were astonished 
by so quick a change: for the event took them unawares. 
Some said of it one thing, and some another: but none could 
know the reason of his conversion. It was God Who, éy a 
hidden leght, had caused this return to Himself.” 2 

This secret conversion was completed by a more violent 
uprush of the now awakened and active transcendental powers. 
Suso, whom one can imagine as a great and highly nervous 
artist if his genius had not taken the channel of sanctity 


*“Teben und Schriften” (Diepenbrock), cap. i. Suso’s autobiography is 
written in the third person. He refers to himself throughout under the title of 
** Servitor of the Eternal Wisdom,” 

® OD. cit., loc. cét. 


2 


226 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


instead, was subject all his life to visions of peculiar richness — 
and beauty. Often enough these visions seem to have floated 
up, as it were, from the subliminal region without disturbing 
the course of his conscious life; and to be little more than 
sharply visualized expressions of his ardour towards and intui- 
tion of, divine realities. The great ecstatic vision—or rather 
apprehension, for there is nothing material about it—with which 
the series opens, however, is of a very different kind; and 
represents the characteristic experience of Ecstasy in its fullest 
form. It is described with a detail and intensity which make it 
a particularly valuable document of the mystical life. It is 
doubtful whether Suso ever saw more than this: the course 
of his long education rather consisted in an adjustment of 
his nature to the Reality which he then perceived. 

“In the first days of his conversion it happened upon 
the Feast of St. Agnes, when the Convent had breakfasted 
at midday, that the Servitor went into the choir. He was 
alone, and he placed himself in the last stall on the prior’s side. 
And he was in much suffering, for a heavy trouble weighed 
upon his heart. And being there alone, and devoid of all 
consolations—no one by his side, no one near him—of a sudden — 
his soul was rapt in his body, or out of his body. Then did 
he see and hear that which no tongue can express. 

“That which the Servitor saw had no form neither any manner 
of being; yet he had of it a joy such as he might have known — 
in the seeing of the shapes and substances of all joyful things. 
His heart was hungry, yet satisfied, his soul was full of content- 
ment and joy: his prayers and hopes were all fulfilled. And 
the Friar could do naught but contemplate this Shining Bright- 
ness ; and he altogether forgot himself and all other things. 
Was it day or night? He knew not. It was, as it were, a 
manifestation of the sweetness of Eternal Life in the sensations of 
_ silence and of rest. Then he said, ‘If that which I see and feel 
be not the Kingdom of Heaven, I know not what it can be: for 
it is very sure that the endurance of all possible pains were but — 
a poor price to pay for the eternal possession of so great a joy.’” 

The physical accompaniments of ecstasy were also present. — 
“This ecstasy lasted from half an hour to an hour, and whether > 
his soul were in the body or out of the body he could not tell. 
But when he came to his senses it seemed to him that he 





THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 227 


returned from another world. And so greatly did his body 
suffer in this short rapture that it seemed to him that none, 
even in dying, could suffer so greatly in so shortatime. The 
Servitor came to himself moaning, and he fell down upon the 
ground likea man who swoons. And he cried inwardly, heaving 
great sighs from the depth of his soul and saying, ‘Oh, my God, 
' where was I and where am I?’ And again, ‘Oh, my heart’s 
joy, never shall my soul forget this hour!’ He walked, but it 
was but his body that walked, as a machine might do. None 
knew from his demeanour that which was taking place within. 
But his soul and his spirit were full of marvels; heavenly 
lightnings passed and repassed in the deeps of his being, and 
it seemed to him that he walked on air. And all the powers of 
his soul were full of these heavenly delights. He was like a 
vase from which one has taken a precious ointment, but in 
which the perfume long remains.” 

Finally, the last phrases of the chapter seem to suggest the 
true position of this exalted pleasure-state as a first link in the 
long chain of mystical development. “This foretaste of the 
happiness of heaven,” he says, “the which the Servitor enjoyed 
for many days, excited in him a most lively desire for God.” ! 

Mystical activity, then, like all other activities of the self, 
opens with that sharp stimulation of the will which can only be 
obtained through the emotional life. 

Suso was a scholar, and an embryo ecclesiastic. During the 
period which elapsed between his conversion and his description 
of it he was a disciple of Meister Eckhart, a student of Dionysius 
and St. Thomas Aquinas. His writings show familiarity with 
the categories of mystical theology; and naturally enough this 
circumstance, and also the fact that they were written for pur- 
poses of edification, may have dictated to some extent the 
language in which his conversion-ecstasy is described. 

As against this, I will give two first-hand descriptions of 
mystical conversion in which it is obvious that theological 
learning plays little or no part. Both written in France within 
a few years of one another, they represent the impact of Reality 
on two minds of very different calibre. One is the secret docu- 
ment in which a great genius set down, in words intended only 
for his own eyes, the record of a two hours’ ecstasy. The other 


* Leben, cap. iii. 


228 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


is the plain, unvarnished statement of an uneducated man of the 
peasant class. The first is, of course, the celebrated Memorial, 
or Amulet, of Pascal; the second is the Relation of Brother 
Lawrence. 

The Memorial of Pascal is a scrap of parchment on which, 
round a rough drawing of the Flaming Cross, there are written 
a few strange phrases, abrupt and broken words; the only news 
which has come to us concerning one of the strangest ecstatic 
revelations chronicled in the history of the mystic type. After 
Pascal’s death a servant found a copy of this little document, 
now lost, sewn up in his doublet. He seems always to have 
worn it upon his person: a perpetual memorial of the supernal 
experience, the initiation into Reality, which it describes. 
Beyond what we can deduce from these few lines, we have no 
direct knowledge of the processes of Pascal’s inner life: but we 
do know that this abrupt illumination came at the end of a long 
period of spiritual distress, in which indifference to his ordinary 
interests was counterbalanced by an utter inability to feel the 
attractive force of that Divine Reality which his great mind dis- 
cerned as the only adequate object of desire. 

The Memorial opens thus :— 


**T’an de grace 1654 
lundi, 23 novembre, jour de Saint Clément, pape 
et martyr, et autres au martyrologe, 
veille de Saint Chrysogone, martyr et autres, 
depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques 
environ minuit et demie, 
Feu.” 


“From half-past ten till half-past twelve, Fire!” That is all, 


so far as description is concerned; but enough, apparently, to 
remind the initiate of all that passed. The rest tells us only 
the passion of joy and conviction which this nameless revelation 


—this long, blazing vision of Reality—brought in its train. It — 
is but a series of amazed exclamations, crude, breathless 


words, placed there helter-skelter, the artist in him utterly in 
abeyance; the names of the overpowering emotions which 
swept him, one after the other, as the Fire of Love disclosed 
its secrets, evoked an answering flame of humility and rapture 
in his soul, 


Ok ee eee 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 229 


**Dieu d’Abraham, Dieu d’Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, 
Non des philosophes et des savants. 
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.” 


“Not the God of philosophers and of scholars!” cries in 
amazement this great scholar and philosopher abruptly turned 
from knowledge to love. 

“Oubli du monde et de tout hormis Dieu,” he says again, 
seeing his universe suddenly swept clean of all but this Tran- 
scendent Fact. Then, “ Le monde ne t’a point connu, mazs je faz 
connu. Joie! joie! joie! pleurs de joie!” Compare with the 
classic style, the sharp and lucid definition of the “ Pensées,” the 
irony and glitter of the “Provinciales,” these little broken phrases 
—this child-like stammering speech—in which a supreme master 
of language has tried to tell his wonder and his delight. I know 
few things in the history of mysticism at once more convincing, 
more poignant than this hidden talisman; upon which the 

brilliant scholar and stylist, the merciless disputant, has jotted 
down in hard, crude words, which yet seem charged with passion 
——the inarticulate language of love—a memorial of the certitude, 
the peace, the joy, above all, the reiterated, all-surpassing joy, 
which accompanied his ecstatic apprehension of God. 

“Mon Dieu, me quitterez vous?” he says again; the fire 
apparently beginning to die down, the ecstasy drawing to an 
end. “Que je n’en sois pas séparé éternellement!” “Are 
you going to leave me? Oh, let me not be separated from 
you for ever!”—the one unendurable thought which would, 
said Aquinas, rob the Beatific Vision of its glory were we not 
sure that it can never fade. But the rhapsody is over, the 
vision of the Fire has gone; and the rest of the Memorial 
clearly contains Pascal’s meditations upon his experience, 
rather than a transcript of the experience itself. It ends with 
the watchword of all mysticism, Surrender—‘“ Renonciation, 
totale et douce” in Pascal’s words: the only way, he thinks, in 
which he can avoid continued separation from Reality.? 

Pascal’s long vision of Light, Life, and Love was highly 
ecstatic; an indescribable, incommunicable experience, which 


* «Summa Contra Gentiles,” 1. ili. cap. Ixii. 

? The complete text of the ‘‘ Memorial” is printed, among other places, in 
Faugére’s edition of the ‘‘ Pensées, Fragments et Lettres de Blaise Pascal,” 2nd ed., 
Paris, 1897. Tomei. p. 269. 


230 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


can only be suggested by his broken words of certitude and joy. 
By his simple contemporary, Brother Lawrence, that Tran- 
scendent Reality Who “is not the God of philosophers and 
scholars,” was perceived in a moment of abrupt intuition, 
peculiarly direct, unecstatic and untheological in type, but 
absolutely enduring in its results. Lawrence was an uneducated 
young man of the peasant class, who first served as a soldier, 
and afterwards as a footman in a great French family, where he 
annoyed his masters by breaking everything. When he was 
between fifty and sixty years of age, he entered the Carmelite 
Order as a lay brother ; and the letters, “spiritual maxims,” and 
conversations belonging to this period of his life were published 
after his death in 1691. “He told me,” says the anonymous 
reporter of the conversations, supposed to be M. Beaufort, who 
was about 1660 Grand Vicar to the Cardinal de Noailles, “that 
God had done him a singular favour in his conversion at the 
age of eighteen. That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of 
its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves 
would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, 
he received a high view of the Providence and Power of God, 
which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this 
view had set him perfectly loose from the world and kindled in 
him such a love for God that he could not tell whether it had 
increased in above forty years that he had lived since.” # 

Such use of visible nature as the stuff of ontological per- 
ceptions, the medium whereby the self reaches out to the 
Absolute, is not rare in the history of mysticism. The 
mysterious, primordial vitality of trees and woods, instinct with 
energy, yet standing, as it were, upon the borderland of dream, 
appears—we know not why—to be particularly adapted to it. 
The silent magic of the forest, the strange and steady cycle of 
its life, possesses in a peculiar degree this power of unleashing 
the human scul: is curiously friendly to its cravings, ministers to 
its inarticulate needs. Unsullied by the corroding touch of 
consciousness, that life can make a contact with the “great life 
of the All”; and through its mighty rhythms man can receive 
a message concerning the true and timeless World of “all that is, 
and was, and evermore shall be.” Plant life of all kinds, indeed, 
from the “flower in the crannied wall” to the “ Woods of 


* Brother Lawrence, ‘‘ The Practice of the Presence of God,”’ p. 9. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 231 


Westermain ” can easily become, for selves of a certain type, a 
“mode of the Infinite.’ So obvious does this appear when we 
study the history of the mystics, that Steiner has seen fit to 
draw from it the hardly warrantable inference that “plants 
are just those natural phenomena whose qualities in the higher 
world are similar to their qualities in the physical world.” 

Though the conclusion be not convincing, the fact remains. 
The flowery garment of the world is for some mystics a medium 
of ineffable perception, a source of exalted joy, the veritable 
clothing of God. I need hardly add that such a state of things 
has always been found incredible by common sense. “The tree 
which moves some to tears of joy,” says Blake, who possessed 
in an eminent degree this form of sacramental perception, “ is 
in the Eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the 
Way.” 2 

Such a perception of the Divine in Nature, of the true and 
holy meaning of that rich, unresting life in which we are immersed, 
is really a more usual feature of Illumination than of Conversion. 
All the most marked examples of it must be referred to that 
state ; and will be discussed when we come to its consideration. 
Sometimes, however, as in the case of Brother Lawrence, the 
first awakening of the self to consciousness of Reality does take 
this form. The Uncreated Light manifests Itself in and through 
created things. This characteristically immanental discovery 
/of the Absolute occurs chiefly in two classes: in unlettered men 
_ who have lived close to Nature, and to whom her symbols are © 
more familiar than those of the Churches or the schools, and in 
temperaments of the mixed or mystical type, who are nearer to 
the poet than to the true contemplative, for whom as a rule the 
Absolu:» “hath no image.” “It was like entering into another 
world, a new state of existence,” says a witness quoted by © 
Starbuck, spéaking of his own conversion. “Natural objects 
were glorified, My spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw 
beauty in every material object in the universe. The woods 
were vocal with heavenly music.” “Oh, how I was changed! 
Everything became new. My horses and hogs and everybody 
became changed !” exclaims with naive astonishment another in 
the same collection. “When I went in the morning into the 


(2 The Way of Initiation,” p. 134. 2 « Letters of William Blake,” p. 62. 
3 ‘* The Psychology of Religion,” p. 120. 


232 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


fields to work,” says a third, “the glory of God appeared in all 
His visible creation. I well remember we reaped oats, and how 
every straw and head of the oats seemed, as it were, arrayed in 
a kind of rainbow glory, or to glow, if I may so express it, in 
the glory of God.” t 

Amongst modern men, Walt Whitman possessed in a 
supreme degree the permanent sense of this glory, the “light 
rare, untellable, lighting the very light.”2 But evidences of its 
existence and the sporadic power of apprehending it are 
scattered up and down the literature of the world. Its dis- 
covery constitutes the awakening of the mystical consciousness 
in respect of the World of Becoming: asharp and sudden break 
with the old and obvious way of seeing things, The human 
cinematograph has somehow changed its rhythm, and\ begins 
to register new and more real aspects of the external world. 
With this, the self’s first escape from the limitations of its 
conventional universe, it receives an immense assurance of a 
great and veritable life surrounding, sustaining, explaining its 
own. Thus Richard Jefferies says, of the same age as that at 
which Suso and Brother Lawrence awoke to sudden conscious- 
ness of Reality, “I was not more than eighteen when\an inner 
and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the. visible 
universe.” “I now became lost, and absorbed into the being or 
existence of the universe . . . and losing thus my separateness 
of being, came to seem like a part of the whole.” “I feel on yy, 
the margin of a life unknown, very near, almost touching it—on — 
the verge of powers which, if I could grasp, would give me an 
immense breadth of existence.” 3 

What was this “life unknown” but the Life known to the 
great mystics, which Richard Jefferies apprehended ai these 
moments of insight, yet somehow contrived to miss ? 

Such participation in the deep realities of the World of 
Becoming, the boundless existence of a divine whole—which a 
modern psychologist has labelled and described as “Cosmic 
Consciousness” 4—whilst it is not the final object of the mystic’s 

* James, ‘‘ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 253. This phenomenon receives 
brilliant literary expression in John Masefield’s poem “The Everlasting Mercy ” (1911). 

? Whitman, ‘* The Prayer of Columbus.”’ Pre 

3 ‘*The Story of My Heart,” pp. 8, 9, 45, 181. i . 

4 Bucke, ‘‘ Cosmic Consciousness, a Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind~’ 
Philadelphia, 1905. Ag 


\. 


3 
THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 200 


journey, is a constant feature of it. It represents one-half of his 
characteristic consciousness: an entrance into communion with 
the second of the Triune Powers of God, the Word which “is 
through all things everlastingly.” Jefferies stood, as so many 
mystically minded men have done, upon the verge of such a 
transcendental life. The “heavenly door,” as Rolle calls it, was 
ajar but not pushed wide. He peeped through it to the greater 
world beyond; but, unable to escape from the bonds of his 
selfhood, he did not pass through to live upon the independent 
spiritual plane. 

Rolle, Jefferies’s fellow Sant tine and his predecessor by 
close upon six hundred years in the ecstatic love and under- 
standing of natural things, shall be our last example of the 
mystical awakening. He, like his spiritual brother St. Francis, 
and other typical cases, had passed through a preliminary period 
of struggle and oscillation between worldly life and a vague but 
growing spirituality: between the superficial and the deeper self. 
“My youth was fond, my childhood vain, my young age 
unclean,”? but “when I should flourish unhappily, and youth 
of wakeful age was now come, the grace of my Maker was near, 
the which lust of temporal shape restrained, and unto ghostly 
supplications turned my desires, and the soul, from low things 
lifted, to heaven has borne.” 2 

The real “life-changing,” however, was sharply and charac- 
teristicadly marked off from this preparatory state. Rolle asso- 
ciates it; wit) the state which he calls “ Heat”: the form in which 
his ardour of soul was translated to the surface consciousness. 
“ Heat soothly | call when the mind truly is kindled in Love 
Everlasting, and the heart on the same manner to burn not 
hopingly }ut verily is felt. The heart truly turned into fire, gives 
feeling oi. burning love.” This burning heat is not merely a 
mental experience. In it we have an unusual but not unique 
form of psycho-physical parallelism: a bodily expression of 
the psychic travail and distress accompanying the “ New Birth.” 
“ More have I marvelled than I show, forsooth,” he says in his 
prologue, “ when I first felt my heart wax warm, and truly, zo¢ 
tmaginingly, but as it were with a sensible fire, burned. I was 
forsooth marvelled, as this burning burst up in my soul, and of 
an unwonted solace; for in my ignorance of such healing 


“Fire of Love,” bk. i. cap. xiii. * Jbid., bk. i. cap. xvi- 


234 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


abundance, oft have I groped my breast, seeing whether this 
burning were of any bodily cause outwardly. But when I knew 
that only it was kindled of ghostly cause inwardly, and this 
burning was naught of fleshly love or desire, in this I conceived 
it was the gift of my Maker.”! Further on, he gives another and 
more detailed account. “From the beginning, forsooth, of my 
life-changing and of my mind, to the opening of the heavenly 
door which Thy Face showed, that the heart might behold 
heavenly things and see by what way its Love it might seek 
and busily desire, three years are run except three months or 
four. The door, forsooth, biding open, a year near-by I passed 
unto the time in which the heat of Love Everlasting was verily 
felt in heart. I sat forsooth in a chapel and whilst with sweet- 
ness of prayer and meditation greatly I was delighted, suddenly 
in me I felt a merry heat and unknown. But at first I 
wondered doubting of whom it should be; but a long time I am 
assured that not of the Creature but of my Maker it was, for 
more hot and gladder I found it.” 2 

To this we must add a passage which I cannot but think one 
of the most beautiful expressions of spiritual joy to be found in 
mystical literature. It forms, as it were, a poetic gloss upon the 
experience just described : its sketch of the ideal mystic life, to 
the cultivation of which he then set himself, revealing in a few 
lines the charm of Rolle’s character, its simplicity and gaiety, its 
capacity for ardent love. In it we see reflected the exqu‘<#te and 
Franciscan candour of soul which enabled him to live} in his 
Yorkshire hermitage, as an earlier brother of the birds did upon 
the Umbrian hills, close to nature and close to God. 

“In the beginning truly of my conversion and singular 
purpose, I thought I would be like the little bird thak for love 
of her lover longs, but in her longing she is gladdenec when he 
' comes that she loves. And joying she sings, and singing she 
longs, but in sweetness and heat. It is said the nightingale to 
song and melody all night is given, that she may please him to 
whom she is joined. How muckle more with greatest sweetness 
to Christ my Jesu should I sing, that is spouse of my soul by all 
this present life, that is night in regard of clearness to come.” 3 

Glancing back at the few cases here brought together, we 


t “ Fire of Love,”’ bk. i. caps. xv. and i. 2 Jbid., bk. i. cap. xvi. 
3 Jbid., bk. li. cap. xii. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 235 


can seein them, I think, certain similarities and diversities which 
_ are often of great psychological interest and importance: and 
which will be found to govern the subsequent development of 
the mystic life. We seein particular at this point, before puri- 
fication, or the remaking of character, begins, the reaction of the 
natural self, its heart and its mind, upon the uprush of new 
truth which operates “mystical conversion.” This reaction is 
highly significant, and gives us a clue not only to the future 
development of the mystic, but to the general nature of man’s 
spiritual consciousness. 

We have said? that this consciousness in its full develop- 
ment seems to be extended not in one but in two directions. 
_ These directions, these two fundamental ways of apprehending 
Reality, may be called the Eternal and Temporal, transcendent 
and immanent, Absolute and dynamic aspects of Truth. They 
comprise the twofold knowledge of a God Who is both Being 
and Becoming, near and far: pairs of opposites which ecstasy 
will carry up into a higher synthesis. But the first awakening 
of the mystic sense, the first breaking in of the supra-sensible 
upon the soul, will involve the emergence of one only of these 
two complementary forms of perception. One side always 
wakes first: the incoming message always choosing the path of 
least resistance. Hence mystical conversion tends to belong to 
one of two distinctive types: tends also as regards its expres- 
sion to follow that temperamental inclination to objectivize 
Reality as a Place, a Person, or a State which we found to 
govern the symbolic systems of the mystics.? 

There is first, then, the apprehension of a splendour without : 
an expansive, formless, ineffable vision, a snatching up of the 
self, as it were, from knowledge of this world to some vague 
yet veritable knowledge of the next. The veil parts, and the 
Godhead is perceived under Its aspect of Transcendence. Not 
the personal touch of love transfiguring the soul, but the imper- 
sonal glory of a transfigured universe is the dominant note of 
this experience: and the reaction of the self takes the form of 
awe and rapture rather than of intimate affection. Ofsuch a 
kind was the conversion of Suso, and in a less degree of Brother 
Lawrence. Of this kind also were the Light which Rulman 
Merswin saw, and the mystical perception of the being of 


* Sudra, p. 42. 2 [bid., p. 153. 


236 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


the universe reported by Richard Jefferies and countless 
others. 

This experience, if it is to be complete, if it is to involve the 
definite emergence of the self from “the prison of I-hood,” its 
setting out upon the Mystic Way, requires an act of concentra- 
tion on the self’s part as the complement of its initial act. of 
expansion. It must pass beyond the stage of metaphysical 
rapture or fluid splendour, and crystallize into a definite concept, 
a definite and personal relation set up between the self and the 
Absolute Life. The vitality and efficiency of the conversion 
from sense to spirit, says Eucken, depends on the vividness of 
the apprehension of the new reality azd on its authority for life. 
To be a spectator of Reality is not enough. The awakened 
subject is not merely to perceive transcendent life, but to par- 
ticipate therein. In Jefferies’s case this crystallization, this heroic 
effort towards participation did not take place, and he never 
therefore laid hold of “the glory that has been revealed.” In 
Suso’s it did, “exciting in him a most lively desire for God.” 

In most cases this crystallization, the personal and imperative 
concept which the mind constructs from the general and ineffable 
intuition of Reality, assumes a theological character. Often it 
presents itself to the consciousness in the form of visions or 
voices: objective, as the Crucifix which spoke to St. Francis, or 
mental, as the visions of the Cross in Rulman Merswin and St. 
Catherine of Genoa. Nearly always, this concept, this intimate 
realization of the divine, has reference to the love and sorrow at 
the heart of things, the discord between Perfect Love and an 
imperfect world; whereas the complementary vision of Tran- 
scendence strikes a note of rapturous joy. “The beatings of the 
Heart of God sounded like so many invitations which thus 
spake: Come and do penance, come and be reconciled, come 
and be consoled, come and be blessed; come, My love, and 
receive all that the Beloved can give to His beloved. . . . Come, 
My bride, and enjoy My Godhead.” 2 ) 

It is to this personal touch, to the individual appeal of an 
immediate Presence, not to the great light and the Beatific 
Vision, that the awakened self makes its most ardent, most 
heroic response. Not because he was rapt from himself, but 


* See Boyce Gibson, ‘‘ Rudolph Eucken’s Philosophy,” p. 85. 
2 St. Mechthild of Hackborn, ‘‘ Liber Specialis Gratize,” 1. ii. cap. i. 


THE AWAKENING OF THE SELF 237 


because the figure on the Cross called him by name, saying, 
“Repair My Church” did St. Francis, with that simplicity, that 
disregard of worldly values which constituted his strength, accept 
the message in a literal sense and set himself instantly to the 
work demanded; bringing stones, and, in defiance alike of 
comfort and convention, building up with his own hands the 
crumbling walls. 

In many conversions to the mystic life, the revelation of . 
an external splendour, the shining vision of the transcendent 
spiritual world, is wholly absent. The self awakes to that 
which is within, rather than to that which is without: to the 
Immanent not the Transcendent God, to the personal not the 
cosmic relation. Where those who look out receive the revela- 
tion of Divine Beauty, those who look in receive rather the 
wound of Divine Love: another aspect of the “triple star.” I 
need not point out that Richard Rolle and Madame Guyon are 
extreme examples of this type: but it is seen in perhaps a more 
balanced form in St. Catherine of Genoa. 

Both Madame Guyon and St. Catherine compare the anguish 
and abruptness of that inward revelation, its rending apart of the 
hard tissues of I-hood and its inevitable setting in relief of their 
own poor finite selves, to a wound. It is “the wound of Un- 
measured Love,” says the legend of St. Catherine: an image in 
which we seem to hear the very accents of the saint. “A wound 
full of delight,” says the more effusive Frenchwoman, “I wished 
that it might never heal.” Rolle calls this piercing rapture a 
creat heat: the heat which is to light the Fire of Love. “As it 
were if the finger were put in fire, it should be clad with feeling 
of burning: so the soul with love (as aforesaid) set afire, truly 
feels most very heat.” 1 

Love, passionate and all-dominant, here takes the place of 
that joyous awe which we noticed as the characteristic reaction 
upon reality in conversions of the Transcendent type. In the 
deep and strong temperaments of the great mystics this love 
passes quickly—sometimes instantly—from the emotional to the 
volitional stage. Their response to the voice of the Absolute is 
not merely an effusion of sentiment, but an act of will: an act 
often of so deep and comprehensive a kind as to involve the 
complete change of the outward no less than of the inward life, 


1 ‘The Fire of Love,” bk. i. cap. i. 


238 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


“Divine love,” says Dionysius, “draws those whom it seizes 
beyond themselves: and this so greatly that they belong no 
longer to themselves but wholly to the Object loved.” * 

Merswin’s oath of self-surrender: St. Catherine of Genoa’s 
passionate and decisive “No more world! no more sins!”: St, 
Francis’s naive and instant devotion to church-restoration in its 
most literal sense: these things are earnests of the reality of the 
change. They represent—symbolize as well as they can upon 
the sensual plane—the inevitable response of every living 
organism to a fresh external stimulus: its adjustment to the 
new conditions which that stimulus represents. They complete 
the process of conversion: which is not one-sided, not merely 
an infusion into the surface-consciousness of new truth, but 
rather the beginning of a life-process, a breaking down of the 
old and building up of the new: a never to be ended give-and- 
take, now set up between the individual and the Absolute. The 
Spirit of Life has been born: and the first word it learns to say 
is Abba, Father. It aspires to its origin; to Life in its most 
intense manifestation: hence all its instincts urge it to that 
activity which it feels to be inseparable from life. It knows 
itself a member of that mighty family in which the stars are 
numbered: the family of the sons of God, who, free and creative, 
sharing the rapture of a living, striving Cosmos, “shout for joy.” 

So, even in its very beginning, we see how active, how 
profoundly organic, how deeply and widely alive is the true 
contemplative life; how truly on the transcendent as on the 
phenomenal plane, the law of living things is action and reaction, 
force and energy. The awakening of the self is to a new and 
more active plane of being, new and more personal relations 
with Reality; hence to new and more real work which it 
_ must do. 


* Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘‘ De Divinis Nominibus,” iv. 13. 


CHAPTER III 
THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 


Purification the necessary corollary of conversion—The Self’s adjustment to 
Reality—Cleansing of the powers of perception—Acquirement of ‘‘ goodness ”— 
Self-knowledge—Contrition—St. Catherine of Genoa on Purgatory—Love the agent 
of purification—Purgation accompanies the whole mystic life ; but the Purgative Way 
is the completiog. of conversion—Self-simplification—Cleansing and stripping— 
Detachment—Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience: the fundamental mystic virtues— 
Spiritual Poverty: the essence of liberty—Jacopone da Todi on Poverty—St. Francis 
of Assisi—The “ Sacrum Commercium ”’—Eckhart on Detachment—An attitude not an 
act—Its various forms—St. Teresa—Antoinette Bourignan—St. Douceline—Per- 
verted detachment—Mortification—The positive aspect of Purgation—The remaking 
of character—Death of the lower nature—Once the new life is established, mortifica- 
tion ends—‘‘ The Mirror of Simple Souls ”—St. Catherine of Genoa—The psycho- 
logical aspect of mortification—Active suffering—The heroic side of purification— 
Tauler—The conquest of fastidiousness—St. Francis of Assisi—Margery Kempe—St. 
Catherine of Genoa—Madame Guyon—Purgation essential to all mysticism—lIts last 
stages—The Game of Love—The fluctuating transcendental consciousness—Rulman 
Merswin—The Passage from Purgation to Illumination—The three factors of the 
Purgative Way—Conclusion 


the first time, of reality, responding to that reality by 

deep movements of love and of awe. She sees herself, 
however, not merely to be thrust into a new world, but set at 
the beginning of a new road. Activity is now to be her watch- 
word, pilgrimage the business of her life. “That a quest there 
is, and an end, is the single secret spoken.” Under one symbol 
or another, that long slow process of transcendence, of character 
building, whereby she is to attain freedom, become capable of 
living upon high levels of reality, is present in her consciousness. 
Those to whom this secret is not imparted are no mystics, in 
the exact sense in which that word is here used ; however great 


their temporary illumination may have been. 
| 239 


Hie then, stands the newly awakened self: aware, for 


240 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


What must be the first step of the self upon this road to 
perfect union with the Absolute? Clearly, a getting rid of all 
those elements of normal experience which are not in harmony 
with reality : of illusion, evil, imperfection of every kind. By 
false desires and false thoughts man has built up for himself 
a false universe: as a mollusc, by the deliberate and persistent 
absorption of lime and rejection of all else, can build up for 
itself a hard shell which shuts it from the external world, 
and only represents in a distorted and unrecognisable form the 
ocean from which it was obtained. This hard and wholly 
unnutritious shell, this one-sided secretion of the surface- 
consciousness, makes as it were a little cave of illusion for each 
separate soul. A literal and deliberate getting out of the cave 
must be for every mystic, as it was for Plato’s prisoners, the first 
step in the individual hunt for reality. 

In the plain language of old-fashioned theology “man’s sin 
is stamped upon man’s universe.” We see a sham _ world 
because we live a sham life. We do not know ourselves ; hence 
do not know the true character of our senses; hence attribute 
wrong values to their suggestions and declarations concerning 
our relation to the external world. That world, which we have 
distorted by identifying it with our own self-regarding arrange- 
ment of its elements, has got to reassume for us the character of 
Reality, of God. In the purified sight of the great mystics it 
did reassume this character: their shells were opened wide, 
they knew the tides of the Eternal Sea. This lucid apprehen- 
sion of the True is what we mean when we speak of the 
Illumination which results from a faithful acceptance of the 
trials of the Purgative Way. 
| The normal self as it exists in the normal world—the “old 

Adam ” of St. Paul—is wholly incapable of supersensual adven- 
ture. All its activities are grouped about a centre of consciousness 
whose correspondences are with the material world. In the 
moment of its awakening, it is abruptly made aware of this 
disability. It knows itself finite. It now inspires to the 
infinite. It is encased in the hard crust of individuality: it 
aspires to union with a larger self. It is fettered: it longs for 
freedom. Its every sense is attuned to illusion: it craves for 
harmony with the Absolute Truth. “God is the only Reality,” 
says Patmore, “and we are real only as far as we are in His 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 241 


order and He is in us.”* Whatever form, then, the mystical 

venture may take, it must be preceded by a change in the 

meade of the subject ; a change which will introduce it into 
the order of Reality, and enable it to set up permanent relations 
with an Object which is not normally part of its universe. 
Therefore, though the end of mysticism is not goodness, it 
entails the acquirement of goodness. The virtues are the 
“ornaments of the spiritual marriage” because that marriage 
is union with the Good no less than with the Beautiful and the 
True. 

Primarily, then, the self must be purged of all that stands 
between it and goodness: putting on the character of reality 
instead of the character of illusion or “sin.” It longs ardently 
to do this from the first moment in which it sees itself in the — 
all-revealing radiance of the Uncreated Light. “When once 
love openeth the inner eye of the soul for to see this truth,” 
says Hilton, “with other circumstances that attend it, then — 
beginneth the soul to be really humble; for then through the 
sight of God it feeleth and ‘seeth itself as it is, and then doth 
the soul forsake the beholding and leaning upon itself.” 2 

So, with Dante, the first terrace of the Mount of Purgatory 
is devoted to the cleansing of pride and the production of 
humility. Such a process is the inevitable—one might almost 
say mechanical—result of a vision, however fleeting, of Reality ; 
an undistorted sight of the earthbound self. All its life it has 
been measuring its candlelight by other candles. Now for the 
first time it is out in the open air and sees the sun. “ This is 
the way,” said the voice of God to St. Catherine of Siena in 
ecstasy. “If thou wilt arrive at a perfect knowledge and enjoy- . 
ment of Me, the Eternal Truth, thou shouldst never go outside 
the knowledge of thyself; and by humbling thyself in the 
valley of humility thou wilt know Me and thyself, from which - 
‘knowledge thou wilt draw all that is necessary. ... In self 
knowledge, then, thou wilt humble thyself; seeing that, in 
thyself, thou dost not even exist.” 3 

The first thing that the self observes, when it turns back 
upon itself in that moment of lucidity—enters, as St. 
Catherine says, into “the cell of self-knowledge,’—is the 


* “The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘‘ Magna Moralia,”’ xxii. 
2 “ The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. vii. 3 Dialogo, cap. iv. 


R 


242 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


horrible contrast between its clouded contours and the pure 
sharp radiance of the Real; between its muddled faulty li 
its perverse self-centred drifting, and the clear onward 


- of that Becoming in which it is immersed. It is then that 


the outlook of rapture and awe receives the countersign of 
humility. The harbinger of that new self which must be 
born appears under the aspect of a desire: a passionate 
longing to escape from the suddenly perceived hatefulness of 
selfhood, and to conform to Reality, the Perfect which it 
has seen under its aspect of Goodness, of Beauty, or of Love 
—-to be worthy of it, in fact to be veal. “This showing,” 
says Gerlac Petersen of that experience, “is so vehement 
and so strong that the whole of the interior man, not only 
of his heart but of his body, is marvellously moved and 
shaken, and faints within itself, unable to endure it. And 
by this means, his interior aspect is made clear without any 
cloud, and conformable in its own measure to Him whom he 
seeks,” ! 

The lives of the mystics abound in instances of the 
“vehemence of this showing”: of the deep-seated sense of 
necessity which urges the newly awakened self to a life of 
discomfort and conflict, often to intense poverty and pain, as 
the only way of replacing false experience by true. Here the 
transcendental consciousness, exalted by a clear intuition of its 
goal, and not merely “counting” but percezving the world to be 
obviously well lost for such a prize, takes the reins. It forces 
on the unwilling surface mind a sharp vision of its own 
disabilities: its ugly and imperfect life. 





The love of Ideal Beauty which is closely bound up with the — 
mystic temperament makes instant response. “No more sins!” 


was the first cry of St. Catherine of Genoa in that crucial hour 
in which she saw by the light of love the ugly and distorted 
nature of her past. She entered forthwith upon the Purgative 


| 


Way, in which for four years she suffered under a profound — 


sense of imperfection, endured fasting, solitude, and mortification, 
and imposed upon herself the most repulsive duties in her 
efforts towards that self-conquest which should make her “con- 
formable in her own measure” to the dictates of that Pure Love 
which was the aspect of reality that she had seen. It is the 


* “Tgnitum cum Deo Soliloquium,” cap. xi. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 243 


inner conviction that this conformity—this transcendence of the 
unreal—is possible and indeed normal, which upholds the mystic 
during the terrible years of Purgation: so that “not only 
without heaviness, but with a joy unmeasured he casts back all 
thing that may him let.” 

To the true lover of the Absolute, Purgation no less than 
Illumination is a privilege, a dreadful joy. It is an earnest of 
increasing life. “Let me suffer or die!” said St. Teresa: a 
strange alternative in the ears of common sense, but a forced 
option in the spiritual sphere. However harsh its form, 
however painful the activities to which it spurs him, the mystic 
recognizes in this break-up of his old universe an essential part 
-of the Great Work: and the act in which he turns to it is an 
act of love no less than an act of will. “ Burning of love intoa 
soul truly taken all vices purgeth: . . . for whilst the true lover 
with strong and fervent desire into God is borne, all things him 
displease that from the sight of God withdraw.”2 His eyes 
once opened, he is eager for that ordering of his disordered 
loves which alone can establish his correspondences with Tran- 
scendental Life. “Teach me my only joy,” cries Suso, “the 
way in which I may bear upon my body the marks of Thy 
Love.” “Come, my soul, depart from outward things and 
gather thyself together into a true interior silence, that thou 
mayst set out with all thy courage and bury and lose thyself in 
the desert of a deep contrition.” 3 

It is in this torment of contrition, this acute consciousness 
of unworthiness, that we have the first swing-back of the oscil- 
lating self from the initial state of mystic pleasure to the 
complementary state of pain. It is, so to speak, on its tran- 
scendental side, the reflex action which follows the first touch of 
God. Thus, we read that Rulman Merswin, “swept away by 
the transports of Divine Love,” did not surrender himself to the 
passive enjoyment of this first taste of Absolute Being, but was 
impelled by it to diligent and instant self-criticism. He was 
‘seized with a hatred of his body, and inflicted on himself such 
hard mortifications that he feil ill.” 4 


* Richard Rolle, ‘* The Mending of Life,” cap. i. 
2 Tbid., ‘‘ The Fire of Love,” bk. i. cap xxiii. 

3 ** Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,”’ cap. v. 

4 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,” p. 19. 


244 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


It is useless for lovers of healthy-mindedness to resent this 
and similar examples of self-examination and penance: to label 
them morbid or mediaeval. The fact remains that only such 


bitter knowledge of wrongness of relation, seen by the light of. 


ardent love, can spur the will of man to the hard task of 
readjustment. 

“TI saw full surely,” says Julian of Norwich, “that it behoveth 
_ needs to be that we should be in longing and in penance until 

the time that we be led so deep into God that we verily and 
truly know our own soul.” ! 

Dante’s whole journey up the Mount of Purgation is the 
dramatic presentation of this one truth. So, too, the celebrated 
description of Purgatory attributed to St. Catherine of Genoa ? 
is obviously founded upon its author’s inward experience of this 
Purgative Way. In it, she applies to the souls of the dead her 


personal consciousness of the necessity of purification ; its place. 


in the organic process of spiritual growth. It is, as she 
acknowledges at the beginning, the projection of her own 
psychological adventures upon the background of the spiritual 
world : its substance being simply the repetition after death of 
that eager and heroic acceptance of suffering, those drastic acts 
of purification which she has herself been compelled to under- 
take under the whip of the same psychic necessity—that of 
removing the rust of illusion, cleansing the mirror in order that 
it may receive the divine light. “It is,’ she says, “as with a 
covered object, the object cannot respond to the rays of the 
sun, not because the sun ceases to shine—for it shines without 
intermission—but because the covering intervenes. Let the 
covering be destroyed, and again the object will be exposed to 
the sun, and will answer to the rays which beat against it in 
proportion as the work of destruction advances. Thus the 
souls are covered by a rust—that is, by sin—which is gradually 
consumed away by the fire of purgatory. The more it is con- 
sumed, the more they respond to Ged their true Sun. Their 
happiness increases as the rust falls off and lays them open to 


 ** Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. lvi. 

? I offer no opinion upon this question of authorship. Those interested may con- 
sult Von Hiigel, ‘‘The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. i., Appendix. Whoever 
may be responsible for its present form, the Treatise is clearly founded upon first-hand 
mystic experience : which is all that our present purpose requires. 


ee 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 245 


the divine ray ... the instinctive tendency to seek happiness 
in God develops itself, and goes on increasing through the fire 
of love, which draws it to its end with such impetuosity and 
vehemence that any obstacle seems intolerable ; and the more 
clear its vision, the more extreme its pain.” ! 


“ Mostratene la via di gire al monte!” cry the souls of the 


newly-dead in Dante’s vision,2 pushed by that “instinctive 
tendency” towards the purifying flames. Such a tendency, 
such a passionate desire, the aspiring self must have. No cool, 
well-balanced knowledge of the need of new adjustments will 
avail to set it on the Purgative Way. This is a heroic act, and 
demands heroic passions in the soul. 

“In order to overcome our desires and to deny ourselves in 
all things,” says St. John of the Cross, who is the classic 
authority upon this portion of the mystic quest, “our love 
and inclination for which are wont so to inflame the will that 
it delights therein, we require another and greater fire of another 
and nobler love—that of the Bridegroom—so that having all 
our joy in Him, and deriving from Him all our strength, we 
may gain such resolution and courage as shall enable us easily 
to abandon and deny all besides. It was necessary, in order to 
subdue our sensual desires, not only to have this love for the 


Bridegroom, but also to be on fire therewith, and that with | 


anxiety ... if our spiritual nature were not on fire with other 
and nobler anxieties—anxieties for that which is spiritual—we 
should never overcome our natural and sensible satisfactions, 
nor be able to enter on the night of sense, neither should we 
have the courage to remain in the darkness, in the denial of 
every desire.” 3 


“It is necessary to be on fire with love, and that with 


anxiety.” Only this deep and ardent passion for a perceived 
Object of Love can persuade the mystic to those unnatural acts 
of abnegation on which he kills his lesser love of the world of 


sense, frees himself from the “remora of desire,” unifies all his - 


energies about the new and higher centre of his life. His 
business, | have said, is transcendence: a mounting up, an 
attainment of a higher order of reality. Once his eyes have 
been opened on Eternity, his instinct for the Absolute roused 


* «© Trattato di Purgatorio,” caps. ii. and iii. ? Purg. ii. 60. 
3 ‘¢ Subida del Monte Carmelo,” 1. i. cap. xiv. 


-_* 


246 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


from its sleep, he sees union with that Reality as his duty no 
less than his joy: sees too that this union can only be con- 
summated on a plane where illusion and selfhood have no 
place. 

The inward voice says to him perpetually at the least season- 
able moments, “ Dimitte omnia transitoria, quaere aeterna.” * 


Hence the purgation of the senses and of the character 
which they have helped to build is always placed first in - 


order in the Mystic Way; though sporadic flashes of illumina- 
tion and ecstasy may, and often do, precede and accompany it. 
Since spiritual no less than physical existence is, as we know 
it, an endless Becoming, it too has no end. In a sense the 
whole of the mystical experience in this life consists in a series 
of purifications, whereby the Finite slowly approaches the 
nature of its Infinite Source: climbing up the cleansing 
mountain pool by pool, like the industrious fish in Rulman 
Merswin’s vision, until it reaches its Origin. The greatest of 
the contemplative saints, far from leaving purgation behind 
them in their progress, were increasingly aware of their own 
inadequateness, the nearer they approached to the unitive state: 
for the true lover of the Absolute, like every other lover, is 
alternately abased and exalted by his unworthiness and _ his 
good fortune. There are moments of high rapture when he 
knows only that the banner over him is Love: but there are 
others in which he remains bitterly conscious that in spite of 
his uttermost surrender there is within him an ineradicable 
residuum of selfhood which “stains the white radiance of 
eternity.” 

In this sense, then, purification is a perpetual process. That 


which mystical writers mean, however, when they speak of the — 


Way of Purgation, is rather the slow and painful completion of 
Conversion. It is the drastic turning of the self from the unreal 
to the real life: a setting of her house in order, an orientation of 
the mind to Truth. Its business is the getting rid, first of self- 
love; and secondly of all those foolish interests in which the 
surface-consciousness is steeped. 

“The essence of purgation,” says Richard of St. Victor, “is 
self-simplification.” Nothing can happen until this has pro- 
ceeded a certain distance: till the involved interests and 


* “ De Imitatione Christi,” 1, iti. cap. i, 


Se te ee 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 247 


tangled motives of the self are simplified, and the false compli- 
cations of temporal life are recognized and cast away. 

“No one,” says another authority in this matter, “can be 
enlightened unless he be first cleansed or purified and stripped.” 2 
Purgation, which is the remaking of character in conformity 
with perceived reality, consists in these two essential acts: the 
cleansing of that which is to remain, the stripping of that which 
is to be done away. It may best be studied, therefore, in two 
parts: and I think that it will be in the reader’s interest if we 
reverse the order which the “ Theologia Germanica” adopts, and 
first consider Negative Purification, or self-stripping, and next 
Positive Purification, or character-adjustment. These, then, 
are the branches into which this subject will here be split. 
(1) The Negative aspect, the stripping or purging away of 
those superfluous, unreal, and harmful things which dissipate the 
precious energies of the self. This is the business of Poverty, 
or Detachment. (2) The Positive aspect: a raising to their 
highest term, their purest state, of all that remains—the per- 
manent elements of character. This is brought about by 
Mortification: the gymnastic of the soul: a deliberate recourse 
to painful experiences and difficult tasks. 


1. DETACHMENT 


Apart from the plain necessity of casting out imperfec- 
tion and sin, what is the type of “good character” which 
will best serve the self in its journey towards union with the 
Absolute ? 

The mystics of all ages and all faiths agree in their answer. 
Those three virtues which the instinct of the Catholic Church 
fixed upon as the necessities of the cloistered life—the great 
Evangelical counsel of voluntary Poverty with its departments: 
Chastity, the poverty of the senses, and Obedience, the poverty 
of the will—are also, when raised to their highest term and trans- 
muted by the Fire of Love, the essential virtues of the mystical 
quest. 

By Poverty the mystic means an utter self-stripping, the 
casting off of immaterial as well as material wealth, a complete 
detachment from all finite things. By Chastity he means an 


* * Theologia Germanica,”’ cap. xiv, 


248 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


extreme and limpid’ purity of soul, virgin to all but God: 
by Obedience, that abnegation of selfhood, that mortifica- 
tion of the will which results in a complete humility, a 
“holy indifference” to the accidents of life. These three 
aspects of perfection are really one: linked together 
as irrevocably as the three aspects of the self. Their 
common characteristic is this: they tend to make the subject | 
regard itself, not as an isolated and interesting individual, 
possessing desires and rights, but as a scrap of the Cosmos, 
an ordinary bit of the Universal Life, only important as a part 
of the All, an expression of the Will Divine. Detachment and 
purity go hand in hand, for purity is but detachment of the 
heart ; and where these are present they bring with them that 
humble spirit of obedience which expresses detachment of will. 
We may therefore treat them as three manifestations of one 
thing : which thing is Inward Poverty. “Blessed are the poor 
in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” is the motto of 
all pilgrims on this road. 

“ God is pure Good in Himself,” says Eckhart, “therefore will 
He dwell nowhere but in a pure soul. There He can pour 
Himself out: into that He can wholly flow. What is Purity ? 
It is that a man should have turned himself away from all 
creatures and have set his heart so entirely on the Pure Good that 
no creature is to him a comfort, that he has no desire for aught 
creaturely, save so far as he may apprehend therein the Pure 
Good, which is God. And as little as the bright eye can endure 
aught foreign in it, so little can the pure soul bear anything in 
it, any stain on it, that comes between it and God. To it all 
creatures are pure to enjoy ; for it enjoyeth all creatures in God, — 
and God in all creatures,” ! 

“To it all creatures are pure to enjoy!” This is hardly the 
popular concept of the mystic ; which credits him, in the teeth 
of such examples as St. Francis, St. Mechthild of Magdeburg, 
Rolle, Suso, and countless others, with a hearty dread of natural 
things. Too many mistaken ascetics of the type of the 
Curé d’Ars, who would not smell a rose for fear of sin, have 
supported in this respect the vulgar belief; for it is generally 
forgotten that though most mystics have practised asceticism as 
a means to an end, all ascetics are not mystics. Whatever may 


* Meister Eckhart, quoted by Wackernagel, ‘ Altdeutsches Lesebuch,” p. 891. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 249 


be the case with other deniers of the senses, it is true that the 
pure soul of the mystic, dwelling on high levels of reality, his 
eyes set on the Transcendental World, is capable of combining 
with the perfection of detachment that intense and innocent joy 
in natural things, as veils and vessels of the divine, which results 
from seeing “all creatures in God and God in all creatures.” 
‘Whoso knows and loves the nobleness of My Freedom,” said 
the voice of God to Mechthild of Magdeburg, “cannot bear to 
love Me alone, he must also love Me in the creatures.”! Such 
a power is characteristic of the illumination which results from a 
faithful endurance of the Purgative Way; for the corollary of 
‘blessed are the pure in heart” is not merely a poetic state- 
‘ment. The annals of mysticism prove it to be a psycho- 
logical law. 

How then is this contradiction to be resolved: that the 
mystic who has declared the fundamental necessity of “ leaving 
all creatures” yet finds them pure to enjoy? The answer to 
the riddle lies in the ancient paradox of Poverty: that we only 
enjoy true liberty in respect of such things as we neither possess 
nor desire. “That thou mayest have pleasure in everything, 
seek pleasure in nothing. That thou mayest know everything, 
seek to know nothing. That thou mayest possess all things, seek 
to possess nothing. ... In detachment the spirit finds quiet 
and repose, for coveting nothing, nothing wearies it by elation ,; 
and nothing oppresses it by dejection, because it stands in 
the centre of its own humility. For as soon as it covets any- 
thing it is immediately fatigued thereby.” 2 

It is not love but lust—the possessive case, the very food of 
selfhood—which poisons the relation between the self and the 
external world and “immediately fatigues” the soul. Divide 
the world into “ mine ” and “ not mine,” and unreal standards 
are set up, claims and cravings begin to fret the mind. We are 
the slaves of our own property. We drag with us not a treasure, 
but achain. “Behold,” says the “ Theologia Germanica,’ “ on 
this sort must we cast all things from us and strip ourselves of 
them: we must refrain from claiming anything for our own. 
When we do this, we shall have the best, fullest, clearest, 
and noblest knowledge that a man can have, and also the 


t «¢ Tas Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt. vi., cap. 4. 
2 St. John of the Cross, *‘ Subida del Monte Carmelo, ’ bk. i. cap. xiii. 


250 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


noblest and purest love and desire.”! “He will not behold the 
Light who attempts to ascend to the vision of the Supreme 
whilst he is drawn downwards by those things that are an 
obstacle to the vision,” says Plotinus, “for he does not ascend 
alone, but brings with him that which separates him from the 
One: in a word, he is not made one.’2 Accept Poverty, how- 
ever, demolish ownership, the verb “to have” in every mood 
and tense, and this downward drag is at an end. At once the 
Cosmos belongs to you and you to it. You escape the heresy 
of separateness, are “made one,” and merged in “the greater 
life of the All.” Then, a free spirit in a free world, the self 
moves upon its true orbit undistracted by the largely self- 
imposed responsibilities of ordinary earthly existence. 

This was the truth which St. Francis of Assisi grasped, 
and applied with the energy of a reformer and the delicate 
originality of a poet to every circumstance of the inner and 
the outer life. This noble liberty it is which is extolled by 
his spiritual descendant, Jacopone da Todi, in one of his most 
magnificent odes :— 


‘* Poverta alto sapere 
a nulla cosa sojacere 
en desprezo possedere 
tutte le cose create. ... 


Dio non alberga en core strecto 
tant’e grande quantai affecto 
povertate ha si gran pecto 
che ci alberga deitate. ... 


Povertate e nulla havere 
et nulla cosa poi volere 
et omne cosa possedere 
en spirito de libertate.” 3 


; “‘ Theologia Germanica,’’ cap. v. 
2 Ennead vi. 9. 


3 ‘Oh Poverty, high wisdom! to be subject to nothing, and by despising all to — 


possess all created things. eee 


God will not lodge in a narrow heart ; and it is as great as thy love. Poverty ‘ 


has so ample a bosom that Deity Itself may lodge therein. .. . 


Poverty is naught to have and nothing to desire: but all things to possess in 


the spirit of liberty.”—/acopone da Todi. Lauda lix, 





THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 251 


“My little sisters the birds,” said St. Francis, greatest adept 
of that high wisdom, “Brother Sun, Sister Water, Mother 
Earth.” Not my servants, but my kindred and _fellow- 
citizens; who may safely be loved’so long as they are not 
desired. So, in almost identical terms, the dying Hindu 
ascetic :— 


‘*Oh Mother Earth, Father Sky, 
Brother Wind, Friend Light, Sweetheart Water, 
Here take my last salutation with folded hands! 
For to-day I am melting away into the Supreme 
Because my heart became pure, 
And all delusion vanished, 
Through the power of your good company.” 


é 


It is the business of Lady Poverty to confer on her lovers 
this freedom of the Universe, to eradicate delusion, purify the 
heart, and initiate them into the “great life of the All.” 
Well might St. Francis desire marriage with that enchantress, 
who gives back ten-fold all that she takes away. “Holy 
poverty,” he said, “is a treasure so high excelling and so 
divine that we be not worthy to lay it up in our vile vessels ; 
since this is that celestial virtue whereby all earthly things 
and fleeting are trodden underfoot, and whereby all hind- 
rances are lifted from the soul so that freely she may join 
herself to God Eternal.” 2 

Poverty is the matchmaker between God and the spirit 
of man. Never will the union to which that spirit tends take 
place without her good offices, her drastic separation of the 
unreal from the real. She strips off the clothing which man so 
often mistakes for himself, transvaluates all his values, and 
shows him things as they are. Thus, in that beautiful chapter 
of the “Sacrum Commercium,” which describes how the friars, 
climbing “the steeps of the hill,” find Lady Poverty at the 
summit “enthroned only in her nakedness,” we are told that 
she “preventing them with the blessings of sweetness,” said, 
“Why hasten ye so from the vale of tears to the mount of 
light? If, peradventure, it is me that ye seek, lo, I am but as 
you behold, a little poor one, stricken with storms and far 


* ‘ Fioretti,” cap. xvi., and ‘‘ Speculum,” cap. cxx, 
? Jbid., cap. xiii. (Arnold’s translation), 


252 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


from any consolation.” Whereto the brothers answer, “ Only 
admit us to thy peace; and we shall be saved.” * 

The same truth: theffsaving peace of utter detachment 
from everything but Divine Reality—a detachment which 
makes those who have it the citizens of the world, and 
enabled the friars to say to Lady Poverty as they showed 
her from the hill of Assisi the whole countryside at her feet, 
“ Hoc est claustrum nostrum, Domina,”? is taught by Meister 
Eckhart in a more homely parable. 

There was a learned man who, eight years long, desired 
that God would show him a man who would teach him the 
truth. And once when he felt a very great longing a voice from 
God came to him and said, “Go to the church and there 
shalt thou find a man who shalt show thee the way to blessed- 
ness.” And he went thence, and found a poor man whose 
feet were torn and covered with dust and dirt: and all his 
clothes were hardly worth three farthings. And he greeted 
him, saying :— 

“God give you good day 

He answered: “I have never had a bad day.” 

“God give you good luck.” 

“T have never had ill luck.” 

“May you be happy ! but why do you answer me thus ?” 

“T have never been unhappy.” 

“ Pray explain this to me, for I cannot understand it.” 

The poor man answered, “Willingly. You wished me 
good day. I never had a bad day; for if I am hungry I praise 
God; if it freezes, hails, snows, rains, if the weather is fair or 
foul, still I praise God; am I wretched and despised, I praise 
God, and so I have never had an evil day. You wished 
that God would send me luck. But I never had ill luck, for 
I know how to live with God, and I know that what He 
does is best; and what God gives me or ordains for me, be 


» 
! 


it good or ill, I take it cheerfully from God as the best that 


can be, and so I have never had ill luck. You wished that 


God would make me happy. I was never unhappy; for my > 


only desire is to live in God’s will, and I have so entirely 


yielded my will to God’s, that what God wills, I will.” 


| 


* “Sacrum Commercium Beati Francisci cum Domina Paupertate,” caps. iv. 


and v. (Rawnsley’s translation). * Op. cit., cap. xxii. 


THH PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 253 


“But if God should will to cast you into hell,’ said the 
learned man, “what would you do then? ” 

“Cast me into hell? His goodness forbids! But if He 
did cast me into hell, I should have two arms to embrace Him. 
One arm is true humility, that I should lay beneath Him, and 
be thereby united to His holy humanity. And with the right 
arm of love, which is united with His holy divinity, I should so 
embrace Him that He would have to go to hell with me. 
And I would rather be in hell and have God, than in heaven 
and not have God.” 

Then the Master understood that true abandonment with 


utter humility is the nearest way to God. 


uC 


The Master asked further: “ Whence are you come?” 

“From God.” 

“ Where did you find God?” 

“When I forsook all creatures.” 

“ Where have you left God?” 

“In pure hearts, and in men of good will.” 

The Master asked: “ What sort of man are you?” 

“T am a king.” 

“Where is your kingdom ?” 

“ My soul is my kingdom, for I can so rule my senses inward 
and outward that all the desires and powers of my soul are in 
subjection, and this kingdom is greater than a kingdom on 
earth.” ! 

“What brought you to this perfection ? ” 

“My silence, my high thoughts, and my union with God. 
For I could not rest in anything that was less than God. Now 
I have found God ; and in God have eternal rest and peace.” 

Poverty, then, consists in a breaking down of man’s invete- 
rate habit of trying to rest in, or take seriously, things which 
are “less than God”: ze., which do not possess the character 
of reality. Such a habit is the most fertile of all causes of 
“world-weariness”’ and disillusion: faults, or rather spiritual 
diseases, which the mystics never exhibit, but which few who 
are without all mystic feeling can hope to escape. Hence the 


* So Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ Freewill is the king of the soul, he inhabits the highest city ot 
that kingdom: that is to say, the desirous forces of the soul” (‘‘ L’Ornement des 
Noces Spirituelles,” 1. i. cap. xxiv.). . 

? Meister Eckhart. Quoted in Martensen’s monograph, p. 107. 


254 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


sharpened perceptions of the contemplatives have always seen 
poverty as a counsel of prudence, a higher form of common 
sense. It is not with St. Francis, or any other great mystic, 
a first principle, an end in itself. It ‘was rather a logical de- 
duction from the first principle of their science—the paramount 
importance to the soul of a clear view of reality. 

Here East and West are in agreement: “Their science,” 
says Al Ghazzali of the Siifis, who practised, like the early 
Franciscans, a complete renunciation of worldly goods, “has 
for its object the uprooting from the soul of all violent passions, 
the extirpation from it of vicious desires, and evil qualities ; 
so that the heart may become detached from all that is not 
God, and give itself for its only occupation meditation upon 
the Divine Being.” ! 

All those who have felt themselves urged towards the attain- 
ment of this transcendental vision, have found that possessions 
interrupt the view, are centres of conflicting interest in the 
mind. They assume a false air of importance, force them- 
selves upon the attention, and complicate life. Hence, in the 
interest of self-simplification, they must be cleared away: a 
removal which involves for the real enthusiast little more sacri- 
fice than the weekly visit of the dustman. “ Having entirely 
surrendered my own free-will,” says Al Ghazzali of his personal 
experience, “my heart no longer felt any distress in renouncing 
fame, wealth, or the society of my children.”2 

Others have contrived to reconcile self-surrender with a more 
moderate abandonment of outward things. Possessions take 
different rank for almost every human soul; and the true rule 
of poverty consists in giving up those things which enchain 
the spirit, divide its interests, and deflect it on its road to the 
Absolute—whether these things be riches, habits, religious 
observances, friends, interests, distastes, or desires—not in mere 
outward destitution for its own sake. It is attitude, not act, 
that really matters; self-denudation would not be necessary 
were it not for our ineradicable tendency to attribute false 
value to things the moment they become our own. “ What is 
poverty of spirit but meekness of mind, by which a man knows 
his own infirmity ?” says Rolle, “seeing that to perfect stable- 


* Schmilders, ‘‘ Essai sur les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes,” p. 54. 
* Lbid., op. cit., p. 58. 


SS 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 255 


ness he may not come but by the grace of God, all thing that 
him might let from that grace he forsakes, and only in joy of 
his Maker he sets his desire. And as of one root spring many 
branches, so of wilful poverty on this wise taken proceed virtues 
and marvels untrowed. Not as some that change their clothes 
and not their souls; riches soothly it seems these forsake, and 
vices innumerable they cease not to gather... . If thou truly 
all thing for God forsake, see more what thou despiseth than what 
thou forsaketh.” * 

From such passages as this it follows that the Poverty ot 
the mystics is a mental rather than a material state. Detach- 
ment is the inner reality, of which Franciscan poverty is a 
‘sacrament to the world. It is the poor in spirit, not the poor 
in substance, who are to be spiritually blessed. “ Let all things 
be forsaken of me,” says Gerlac Petersen, “so that being poor 
I may be able in great inward spaciousness, and without any 
hurt, to suffer want of all those things which the mind of man 
can desire; out of or excepting God Himself.” 

“JT am not speaking here of the absence of ¢hzngs,” says 
St. John of the Cross, “for absence is not detachment if 
the desire remains—but of that detachment which consists 
in suppressing desire and avoiding pleasure. It is this that 
sets the soul free, even though possession may be still 
retained.” 3 

Every person in whom the mystical instinct awakes soon 
discovers in himself certain tastes or qualities which interrupt 
the development of that instinct. Often these tastes and 
qualities are legitimate enough upon their own plane; but 
they are a drain upon the energy of the self, preventing 
her from attaining that intenser life for which she was made 
and which demands all her interest and energy. They distract 
her attention, they fill the field of perception: making of the 
surface-consciousness so active a thing that it can hardly be 
put to sleep. ‘“ Where can he have that pure and naked vision 
of unchangeable Truth whereby he see into all things,” says 
Petersen again, “who is so busied in other things, not perhaps 
evil, which operate . . . upon his thoughts and imagination and 


t Richard Rolle, ‘* The Mending of Life,”’ cap. iii. 
2 “ Tonitum cum Deo Soliloquium,” cap. i. 
3 ‘* Subida del Monte Carmelo,” I. i. cap. 


| 256 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


confuse and enchain his mind . . . that his sight of that unique 
One in Whom all things are is over-clouded ?”! 

Now the nature of these distracting factors which “confuse 
and enchain the mind” will vary with almost every individual. 
It is impossible to predict in any one case what the things will 
be which the self must give up in order that the transcendental 
consciousness may grow. “ Does it make any difference whether 
a bird be held by a slender thread or by a rope, while the bird 
is bound and cannot fly until the cord that holds it is broken? 
It is true that a slender thread is more easily broken; still 
notwithstanding, if it is not broken the bird cannot fly. This 
is the state of a soul with particular attachments: it never can 
attain to the liberty of the divine union, whatever virtues it 
may possess. Desires and attachments affect the soul as the 
remora is said to affect a ship; that is but a little fish, yet when 
it clings to the vessel it effectually hinders its progress.” 

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” is a statement 
that is peculiarly true in regard to questions of detachment. 
Here each adventurer must—and does—judge for - himself; 
extirpating all those interests which nourish selfhood, however 
innocent or even useful they may seem in the eyes of the 
world. The only rule is the remorseless abandonment of 
everything which is in the way. “When any man God per- 
fectly desires to love, all things as well inward as outward 
that to God’s love are contrary and from His love do let, he 
studies to do away.”3 This may mean the utter self-stripping 
of St. Francis of Assisi, who cast off his actual clothing in his 
relentless determination to have nothing of his own:4 or the 
scarcely less drastic proceedings of Antoinette Bourignan, 
who found that a penny was enough to keep her from God. 

“Being one night in a most profound Penitence,” says 
the biographer of this extraordinary woman, “she said 
from the bottom of her Heart, ‘O my Lord! what must 
I do to please Thee? For I have nobody: to teach me. 
Speak to my soul and it will hear Thee’” At that instant 
she heard, as if another had spoken within her, “ Forsake all 


® Gerlac Petersen, of. czt., cap. xi. 

? St. John of the Cross, of. cé#., 1. i. cap. xi. 

3 Richard Rolle, “ The Fire of Love,” bk. i. cap. xix. 
4 Thomas of Celano, Legenda Prima; cap. vi. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 257 


earthly things. Separate thyself from the love of the 
creatures. Deny thyself.’ From this time the more she 
entered into herself the more she was inclined to abandon 
all. But she had not the courage necessary for the com- 
plete renunciation towards which her transcendental conscious- 
ness was pressing her. She struggled to adjust herself to the 
' inner and the outer life, but without success. For such a 
character as hers, compromise was impossible. “She asked 
always earnestly, When shall I be perfectly thine, O my God? 
and she thought He still answered her, When thou shalt no 
longer possess anything, and shalt die to thyself. And where 
shall I do that, Lord? He answered, /u the Desert.’ At last 
- the discord between her deeper and her superficial self became 
intolerable. Reinforced by the miseries of an unsympathetic 
home, still more by a threat of approaching marriage, the in- 
exorable inner powers got their way. She submitted; and 
having disguised herself in a hermit’s dress—she was only 
eighteen and had no one to help or advise her—‘“ she went 
out of her chamber about Four in the Morning, taking nothing 
but one Penny to buy Bread for that Day; and it being said 
to her in the going out, Where zs thy Fatth? Ina Penny? she 
threw it away. . .. Thus she went away wholly delivered from 
the heavy burthen of the Cares and Good Things of this World.”! 

An admirable example of the mystic’s attitude towards the 
soul-destroying division of interests, the natural but hopeless - 
human struggle to make the best of both worlds, which sucks 
at its transcendental vitality, occurs in St. Teresa’s purga- 
tive period. In her case this state of purification, the war 
between the real and the superficial self, extended over a long 
‘ term of years. It ran side by side with the state of Illumina- 
tion, co-existing with a fully developed contemplative life ; and 
was only brought to an end by that “Second Conversion” 
which at last unified her scattered interests and set her firmly 
and for ever on the Unitive Way. The almost virile strength 
of Teresa’s character, which afterwards contributed to the great- 
ness of her achievement in the unitive state, opposed itself to 
the invading transcendental consciousness ; disputed every inch 
of territory, resisted every demand made upon it by the grow- 
ing spiritual self. Bit by bit it was conquered, the sphere of 


* « An Apology for Mrs. Antoinette Bourignan,” pp. 269-70, 
s 


258 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM | 


her deeper life enlarged ; until the moment came in which she 
surrendered, once for all, to her true destiny. 

During the years of inward stress, of penance and growing 
knowledge of the Infinite which she spent in the Convent of the 
Incarnation, and which accompanied this slow remaking of 
character, Teresa’s only self-indulzence—as it seems, a suffi- 
ciently innocent one—was talking to the friends who came 
down from Avila to the convent-parlour, and spoke to her 
through the gvz//e. Her confessors, unaccustomed to the educa- 
tion of mystical genius, saw nothing incompatible between this 
practice and the pursuit of a high contemplative life. But as 
her transcendental consciousness, her states of orison grew 
stronger, Teresa felt more and more the distracting influence of 
these glimpses of the outer world. They were a drain upon the 
energy which ought to be wholly given to that new, deep, more 
real life which she felt stirring within her, and which could only 
hope to achieve its mighty destiny by complete concentration 
upon the business in hand. No genius can afford to dissipate 
his energies : the mystic genius least of all. Teresa knew that 
so long as she retained these personal satisfactions, her life had 
more than one focus; she was not whole-hearted in her sur- 
render to the Absolute. But thougn her inward voices, her 
deepest instincts, urged her to give them up, for years she felt 
herself incapable of such a sacrifice. It was round the question 
of their retention or surrender that the decisive battle of her life 
was fought. 

“ The devil,” says her great Augustinian eulogist, Fray Luis 
de Leon, in his vivid account of these long interior struggles, “ put 
before her those persons most sympathetic by nature; and God 
came, and in the midst of the conversation discovered Himself 
aggrieved and sorrowful. The devil delighted in the conversa- 
tion and pastime, but when she turned her back on them and 
_ betook herself to prayer, God redoubled the delight and favours, 
as if to show her how false was the lure which charmed her at 
the grating, and that His sweetness was the veritable sweetness. 
...+ Sothat these two inclinations warred with each other in 


* St. Teresa’s mystic states are particularly difficult to classify. From one point 
of view these struggles might be regarded as he preliminaries of conversion. She 
was, however, proficient in contemplation when they occurred, and I therefore think 
that my arrangement is the right one, 


~ 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 259 


the breast of this blessed woman, and the authors who inspired 
them each did his utmost to inflame her most, and the oratory 
blotted out what the grating wrote, and at times the grating 
vanquished and diminished the good fruit produced by prayer, 
causing agony and grief which disquieted and perplexed her 
soul: for though she was resolved to belong entirely to God, 
_ she knew not how to shake herself free from the world: and at 
times she persuaded herself that she could enjoy both, which 
ended mostly, as she says, in complete enjoyment of neither. 
For the amusements of the locutorio were embittered and 
turned into wormwood by the memory of the secret and sweet 
intimacy with God; and in the same way when she retired to 
be with God, and commenced to speak with Him, the affections 
and thoughts which she carried with her from the grating took 
possession of her.” 3 

Compare with these violent oscillations between the super- 
ficial and mystical consciousness—characteristic of Teresa’s 
strong volitional nature, which only came to rest after psychic 
convulsions which left no corner of its being unexplored—the 
symbolic act of renunciation under which Antoinette Bourignan’s 
“interior self” vanquished the surface.intelligence and asserted 
its supremacy. Teresa must give up her passionate interest in 
human life. Antoinette, never much tempted in that direction, 
must give up her last penny. What society was to Teresa’s 
generous, energetic nature, prudence was to the temperamentally 
shrewd and narrow Antoinette: a distraction, a check on the 
development of the all-demanding transcendental genius, an 
-unconquered relic of the “lower life.” 

Many a mystic, however, has found the perfection of detach- 
ment to be consistent with a far less drastic renunciation of 
external things than that which these women felt to be essential 
to their peace. The test, as we have seen, does not lie in the 
nature of the things which are retained, but in the reaction which 
they stimulate in the self. “Absolute poverty is thine,” says 
Tauler, “when thou canst not remember whether anybody has 
ever owed thee or been indebted to thee for anything; just as 
all things will be forgotten by thee in the last journey of 
death.” Poverty, in this sense, may be consistent with the 


* Quoted by G. Cunninghame Graham, “ Santa Teresa,” vol. i. P- 139: 
2 Sermon on St, Paul (‘‘ The Inner Way,” p. 113). 


260 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM | 


habitual and automatic use of luxuries which the abstracted 
self never even perceives. Thus we are told that St. Bernard 
was reproached by his enemies with the inconsistency of preach- 
ing evangelical poverty whilst making his journeys from place 
to place on a magnificently caparisoned mule, which had been 
lent to him by the Cluniac monks. He expressed great contri- 
tion: but said that he had never noticed what it was that he 
rode upon.! 

Sometimes, the very activity which one self has rejected as 
an impediment becomes for another the channel of spiritual 
perception. I have mentioned the case of the Curé d’Ars, who, 
among other inhibitions, refused to allow himself to smell a rose. 
Sharply opposed to this is the case of St. Francis, who preached 
to the flowers,2 and ordered a plot to be set aside for their 
cultivation when the convent garden was made, “in order that 
all who saw them might remember the Eternal Sweetness.” 3 
So, too, we are told of his spiritual daughter, St. Douceline, that 
“out of doors one day with her sisters, she heard a bird’s note. 
‘What a lovely song!’ she said: and the song drew her straight- 
way to God. Did they bring her a flower, z¢s beauty had a like 
effect.”4 Here we are reminded of Plato. “The true order of 
going is to use the beauties of Earth as steps along which one 
mounts upwards for the sake of that other Beauty.” This, too, 
is the true order of Holy Poverty: the selfless use, not the 
selfish abuse of lovely and natural things. 

To say that so difficult a counsel of perfection should some- 
times have been practised in excess, is but to say that asceticism 
is a human, not an inhuman art. Such excesses, however, 
are found most often amongst those saintly types who have not 
exhibited true mystic intuition. This intuition, entailing as it 
does communion with intensest Life, gives to its possessorsa - 
sweet sanity, a delicate balance, which guards them, as a rule, 
from such conceptions of chastity as that of the youthful saint 
who shut himself in a cupboard for fear he should see his 
mother pass by: from obedience of the type which identifies 
the voice of the director with the voice of God; from detach- 


* Cotter Morison, ‘‘ Life and Times of St. Bernard,” p. 68. 
* Thomas of Celano, Legenda Prima, cap. xxix. 

3 Jbid., Legenda Secunda, cap. cxxiv. 

4 Anne Macdonell, ‘‘St. Douceline,” p. 30. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 261 


ment such as that exhibited by the Blessed Angela of Foligno, 
who, though a true mystic, viewed with murderous delight the 
deaths of relatives who were “impediments.”! The detach- 
ment of the mystic is just a restoration to the liberty in which 
the soul was made: it is a state of joyous humility in which he 
cries, “ Nought I am, nought I have, nought I lack.” To have 
arrived at this is to have escaped from external illusion: to be 
initiated into the purer air of that universe which knows but 
one rule of action—that which was laid down once for all by St. 
Augustine when he said, in the most memorable and misquoted 
of epigrams : “ Love, and do what you like.” 


2. MORTIFICATION 


By mortification, I have said, is to be understood the positive 
aspect of purification: the remaking in relation to reality of 
the permanent elements of character. These elements, so far, 
have subserved the interests of the old self, worked for it in the 
world of sense. Now they must be adjusted to the needs of the 
new self and to the transcendent world in which it moves. Their 
focal point is the old self, the lower centre of consciousness ; 
and the object of mortification is to kill that old self, remove 
that lower centre, in order that the higher centre, the “new 
man,” may live and breathe. As St. Teresa discovered when 
she tried to reconcile the claims of friendship and contempla- 
tion, one or other must go: a house divided against itself 
cannot stand. “Who hinders thee more,” says Thomas a 
Kempis, “than the unmortified affections of thy own heart? 

. if we were perfectly dead unto ourselves and not entangled 
within our own breasts, then should we be able to taste Divine 
things, and to have some experience of heavenly contempla- 
tion.” 2 

In psychological language, the process of mortification is the 
process of setting up “new paths of neural discharge.” That is 


* “Tn that time and by God’s will there died my mother, who was a great 
hindrance unto me in following the way of God: my husband died likewise, and in a 
short time there also died all my children. And because I had commenced to follow 
the aforesaid Way, and had prayed God that He would rid me of them, I had great 
consolation of their deaths, albeit -I did also feel some grief’? (Beatae Angelae de 
Fulginio, ‘‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,” cap. ix., English translation, p. 5). 

2 ** De Imitatione Christi,” 1. i. caps. iii. and xi. 


262 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


to say, the mystic life has got to express itself in action : and 
for this new paths must be cut and new habits formed—all, in 
spite of the new self’s enthusiasm, “against the grain.” The 
energy which wells up incessantly in every living being must 
abandon the old road of least resistance and discharge itself in 
a new and more difficult way. The old paths, left to them- 
selves, must fade and at last die. When they are dead, and the 
new life has triumphed, Mortification is at an end. The mystics 
always know when this moment comes. An inner voice then 
warns them to lay their active penances aside. 

Since the greater and stronger the mystic, the stronger and 
more stubborn his character tends to be, this change of life and 
turning of energy from the old and easy channels to the new 
is often a stormy matter. It is a period of actual battle 
between the inharmonious elements of the self, its lower and 
higher springs of action: of toil, fatigue, bitter suffering, and 
many disappointments. Nevertheless, in spite of its etymo- 
logical associations, the object of mortification is not death but 
life: the production of health and strength, the health and 
strength of the human consciousness viewed sub specie aeter- 
nitatis. “In the truest death of all created things, the sweetest 
and most natural life is hidden.” ! 

“ This dying,” says Tauler again, “has many degrees, and so 
has this life. A man might die a thousand deaths in one day, 
and find at once a joyful life corresponding to each of them. This 
is as it must be: God cannot deny or refuse this to death. 
The stronger the death the more powerful and thorough is the 
corresponding life; the more intimate the death, the more 
inward is the life. Each life brings strength, and strengthens 
to a harder death. When aman dies to a scornful word, bear- 
ing it in God’s name, or to sonie inclination inward or outward, 
acting or not acting against his own will, be it in love or grief, in 
word or act, in going or staying; or if he denies his desires of 
taste or sight, or makes no excuse when wrongfully accused ; or 
anything else whatever it may be to which he has not yet died, 
it is harder at first to one who is unaccustomed to it and un- 
mortified than to him who is mortified. ... A -great life makes 
reply to him who dies in earnest even in the least things, a life 
which strengthens him immediately to die a greater death; a 


* Tauler, Sermon on St. Paul (‘* The Inner Way,”’ p. 114). 


a 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 263 


death so long and strong, that it seems to him hereafter more 
joyful, good and pleasant to die than to live, for he finds life in 
death and light shining in darkness,” 1 

No more than detachment, then, is mortification an end in 
itself. It is a means to the production of a definite kind of 
efficiency, a definite kind of vitality: like its physical parallel, 
the exercises of the gymnasium. Once this efficiency, this 
vitality, is produced, this training accomplished, mortification 
ends: often with startling abruptness. After a martyrdom 
which lasted sixteen years, says Suso—speaking as usual in the 
third person—of his own experience, “On a certain Whitsun 
Day a heavenly messenger appeared to him, and ordered him in 
God’s name to continue it no more. He at once ceased, and 
threw all the instruments of his sufferings [irons, nails, hair- 
shirt, &c.] into a river.” 2 From this time onward, austerities 
of this sort had no part in Suso’s life. 

The unknown French ecstatic who wrote, and the English 
contemplative who translated, “The Mirror of Simple Souls,” 3 
have between them described and explained in bold and 
accurate language the conditions under which the soul is 
enabled to abandon that “hard service of the virtues” which 
has absorbed it during the Purgative Way. The statement of 
the “French Book” is direct and uncompromising: well calcu- . 
lated to startle timid piety. ‘“ Virtues, I take leave of you for 
evermore!” exclaims the Soul. “Now shall my heart be more 
free and more in peace than it has been. Forsooth, I wot well 
your service is too travaillous. Some time I laid my heart in 
you without any dissevering: ye wot well this. I was in all 
things to you obedient. O then I was your servant: but now | 
am delivered out of your thraldom.” 

To this astounding utterance the English translator has 
added a singularly illuminating gloss. “I am stirred here,” 
he says, “to say more of the matter, as thus: First when a soul 


gives her to perfection, she labours busily day and night to get 


virtues by counsel of reason, and strives with vices at every 
thought, at every word and deed that she perceives comes of 
them, and busily ensearches vices, them to destroy. Thus the 


* Tauler, Second Sermon for Easter Day. (This is not included in either of the 
English collections.) 
2 Suso, Leben, cap. xvil. 3 B.M. Add. 37790. 


264 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM — 


virtues be mistresses, and every virtue makes her to war with 
its contrary, the which be vices. Many sharp pains and bitter- 
ness of conscience feels the soul in this war. ... But so long 
one may bite on the bitter bark of the nut, that at last he shall 
come to the sweet kernel: right so, shortly to understand, it 
fares by these souls that be come to peace. They have so long 
striven with vices and wrought by virtues that they be come to 
the nut’s kernel, that is to say to the love of God, which is 
sweetness. And when the soul has deeply tasted this love . . . 
then the soul is wondrous light and gladsome. Then is she 
mistress and lady over the virtues, for she has them all within 
herself. . . . And then this soul takes leave of virtues, as of the 
thraldom and painful travail of them that she had before. And 
now she is lady and sovereign and they be subjects.” 
Jacopone da Todi speaks to the same effect :— 


‘La guerra e terminata 
de le virtu battaglia 
de la mente travaglia 
cosa nulla contende.” * 


So too in the case of St. Catherine of Genoa, after a penitential 
period of four years, during which she was haunted by a con- 
stant sense of sin, and occupied by incessant mortifications, “all 
thought of such mortifications was zm an instant taken from 
her mind: in such a manner that, had she even wished to 
continue such mortifications, she would have been unable 
todo so... the sight of her sins was now taken from her 
mind, so that henceforth she did not catch a glimpse of them: 
it was as though they had all been cast into the depths of the 
sea.”2. In other words, the new and higher centre of conscious- 
ness, finally established, asserted itself and annihilated the old. 
“La guerra e terminata,” all the energy of a strong nature flows 
freely in the new channels, and mortification ceases, mechanically, 
to be possible to the now unified or “ regenerated ” self. 

Mortification takes its name from the reiterated statement of 
all ascetic writers that the senses, or body of desire, with the 
cravings which are excited by different aspects of the pheno- 


* “©The war is at an end: in the battle of virtues, in travail of mind, there is no 
more striving” (Lauda xci.). 
2 Vita e Dottrina, cap. v. 


+ 
THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 265 


menal world, must be mortified or killed; which is, of 
course, but the statement of psychological necessities from 
another point of view. All those self-regarding instincts—so 
ingrained that they have become automatic—which impel the 
self to choose the more comfortable part, are seen by the 
awakened intuition of the embryo mystic as gross infringements 
of the law of love. “This then must be the travail and labour 
of a man, to draw his heart and mind from the fleshly love and 
liking of all earthly creatures, from vain thoughts and from 
fleshly imaginations and from the love and vicious feeling of 
himself, so that the soul shall or may find or take no rest in any 
fleshly thoughts or worldly affections.”! The rule of Poverty 
must be applied to all the circumstances of normal conscious- 
ness as well as to the tastes and possessions of the self. Under 
this tonic influence real life will thrive, unreal life will wither 
and die. 

This mortifying process is rendered necessary, not because 
the legitimate exercise of the senses is opposed to Divine Reality, 
but because those senses have usurped a place beyond their 
station; become the focus of energy, steadily drained the 
vitality of the self. “The dogs have taken the children’s meat.” 
The senses have grown stronger than their masters, monopolized 
the field of perception, dominated an organism which was made 
for greater activities, and built up those barriers of individuality 
which must one and all be done away before the subject can 
fulfil its destiny and pass over into the boundless life of the 
One. It is thanks to this wrong distribution of energy, this sedu- 
lous feeding of the cuckoo in the nest, that “in order to approach 
the Absolute, mystics must withdraw from everything, even 
themselves.”2 “Itis therefore supreme ignorance for any one to 
think that he can ever attain to the high estate of union with 
God before he casts away from him the desire of natural things,” 
says St. John of the Cross,3 “and of supernatural also so far as 
it concerns self-love, because the distance between them and 
that which takes place in the state of pure transformation 


in God is the very greatest.” Again, “until the desires be 


lulled to sleep by the mortification of sensuality, and sensuality 


* Walter Hilton, ‘‘ The Scale of Perfection,” bk. i. pt. iii. cap. 
2 Récéjac, ‘‘ Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 78. 
3 * Subida del Monte Carmelo,” 1. i. cap. v. 


266 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


itself be mortified in them, so that it shall be contrary to the 
spirit no more, the soul cannot go forth in perfect liberty to the 
fruition of the union with the Beloved.” ! 

The death of selfhood in its narrow obvious sense is, then, 
the primary object of mortification. Allthe twisted elements of 
character which minister to the existence of this unreal yet 
complex creature are to be pruned away. Then as with the 
trees of the forest, so with the spirit of man, strong new 
branches will spring into being, grow towards air and light. 
“TI live, yet not I” is to be the confession of the mystic who 
has endured this “bodily death.” The self-that-is-to-be will 
live upon a plane where her own prejudices and preferences are 
so uninteresting as to be imperceptible. She must be weaned 
from these nursery toys: and weaning is a disagreeable process. 
The mystic, however, undertakes it as a rule without reluctance: 
pushed by his vivid consciousness of imperfection, his intuition 
of a more perfect state necessary to the fulfilment of his love. 
Often his entrance upon the torments of the Purgative Way, his 
taking up of the spiritual or material instruments of mortifica- 
tion, resembles in ardour and abruptness that “heroic plunge 
into Purgatory” of the newly dead when it perceives itself in 
the light of Love Divine, which is described in the Treatise of 
St. Catherine of Genoa as its nearest equivalent. “As she, 
plunged in the divine furnace of purifying love, was united to 
the Object of her love, and satisfied with all he wrought in her, 
so she understood it to be with the souls in Purgatory.” 2 

This “divine furnace of purifying love” demands from 
the ardent soul, not only a complete self-surrender and 
voluntary turning from all impurity, a humility of the most 
far-reaching kind: but also a deliberate active suffering, a self- 
discipline in dreadful tasks. As gold in the refiner’s fire, so 
“burning of love into a soul truly taken all vices purgeth.” 
Where detachment may be a counsel of prudence, a practical 
result of seeing the true values of things, the pain of mortification 
is seized as a splendid opportunity, a love token, timidly offered 
by the awakened spirit to that all-demanding Lover from) 
Whom St. Catherine of Siena heard the terrible words “I, Fire, 
the Acceptor of sacrifices, ravishing away from them their 


™ Op. cét., bk. i. cap. xv. 
2 S. Caterina di Genova, ‘‘ Trattato di Purgatorio,” cap. i. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 267 


darkness, give the light.’! “Suffering is the ancient law of 
love,’ says the Eternal Wisdom to Suso, “there is no quest 
without pain, there is no lover who is not also a martyr. 
Hence it is inevitable that he who would love so high a thing 
as Wisdom should sometimes suffer hindrances and griefs.” 2 

The mystics have a profound conviction that Creation, 
Becoming, Transcendence, is a painful process at the best. 
Those amongst them who are Christians point to the Passion 
of Christ as a proof that the cosmic journey to perfection, the 
path of the Eternal Wisdom, follows of necessity the Way of 
the Cross. That old dreadful law of the inner life, which 
sounds so fantastic and yet is so bitterly true—‘“ No progress 
without pain ”—asserts itself. It declares that birth pangs 
must be endured in the ‘spiritual as well as in the material 
world: that adequate training must always hurt the athlete. 
Hence it is that the mystics’ quest of the Absolute drives them 
to an eager and heroic union with the reality of suffering, as 
well as with the reality of joy.3 

This divine necessity of pain, this necessary sharing in the 
travail of a World of Becoming, is beautifully described by Tauler 
in one of those “internal conversations ” between the contem- 
plative soul and its God, which abound in the works of the 
mystics and are familiar to all readers of “The Imitation of 
Christ.” “A man once thought,” says Tauler, “that God drew 
some men even by pleasant paths, while others were drawn by 
the path of pain. Our Lord answered him thus, ‘ What think 
ye can be pleasanter or nobler than to be made most like unto 
Me? that is by suffering. Mark, to whom was ever offered 
such a troubled life as to Me? And in whom can I better work 
in accordance with My true nobility than in those who are most 


* Dialogo, cap. Ixxxv. 2 Leben, cap. iv. 

3 **This truth, of which she was the living example,” says Huysmans of St. 
Lydwine, ‘‘ has been and will be true for every period. Since the death of Lydwine, 
there is not a saint who has not confirmed it. Hear them formulate their desires. 
Always to suffer, and to die! cries St. Teresa ; always to suffer, yet not to die, 
corrects St. Magdalena dei Pazzi; yet more, oh Lord, yet more ! exclaims St. Francis 
Xavier, dying in anguish on the coast of China; I wish to be broken with suffering in 
order that I may prove my love to God, declares a seventeenth century Carmelite, the 
Ven. Mary of the Trinity. The desire for suffering is itself an agony, adds a great 
servant of God of our own day, Mother Mary Du Bourg; and she confided to her 
daughters in religion that ‘if they sold pain in the market she would hurry to buy 
it there’ ” (J. K. Huysmans, ‘‘ Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam,’’ 3rd edition, p. 225). 


968 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


like Me? They are the men who suffer. ... Learn that My 
divine nature never worked so nobly in human nature as by 
suffering ; and because suffering is so efficacious, it is sent out 
of great love. I understand the weakness of human nature at 
all times, and out of love and righteousness I lay no heavier load 
on man than he can bear. The crown must be firmly pressed 
down that is to bud and blossom in the Eternal Presence of My 
Heavenly Father. He who desires to be wholly immersed in 
the fathomless sea of My Godhead must also be deeply im- 
mersed in the deep sea of bitter sorrow. I am exalted far 
above all things, and work supernatural and wonderful works 
in Myself: the deeper and more supernaturally a man crushes 
himself beneath all things, the more supernaturally will he be 
drawn far above all things.’” = 

Pain, therefore, the mystics often court: sometimes in the 
crudely physical form which Suso describes so vividly and 
horribly in the sixteenth chapter of his Life, more frequently 
in those refinements of torture which a sensitive spirit can 
extract from loneliness, injustice, misunderstanding—above 
all, from deliberate contact with the repulsive accidents 
of life. 

It would seem from a collation of the evidence that the 
typical mystical temperament is by nature a highly fastidious 
one. Its passionate apprehension of spiritual beauty, its 
intuitive perception of divine harmony, is counterbalanced 
by an instinctive loathing of ugliness, a shrinking from the 
disharmonies of squalor and disease. Often its ideal of re- 
finement is far beyond the contemporary standards of decency: 
a circumstance which is alone enough to provide ample oppor- 
tunity of wretchedness. This extreme sensitiveness, which 
appears to form part of the normal psycho-physical make-up 
of the mystic, as it often does of the equally highly-strung 
artistic type, is one of the first things to be seized upon by 
the awakened self as a disciplinary instrument. Then humi- 
lity’s axiom, “ Naught is too low for love” is forced to bear the 
less lovely gloss, “ Naught must be too disgusting.” 

Two reasons at once appear for this. One is the innate 
contempt for phenomena, nasty as well as nice—the longing to | 
be free from all the fetters of sense—which goes with the 


* Tauler, Sermon on St. Paul (“The Inner Way,’’ p. 114). 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 269 


passion for invisible things, Those to whom the attractions 
of earth are only illusion, are inconsistent if they attribute a 
greater reality to the revolting and squalid incidents of life. 
St. Francis did but carry his own principles to their logical 
conclusion, when he insisted that the vermin were as much his 
brothers as the birds. Real detachment means the death of 
preferences of all kinds: even of those which seem to other 
men the very proofs of virtue and fine taste. 

The second reason is a nobler one, It is bound up with 
that principle of self-surrender which is the mainspring of the 
mystic life. To the contemplative mind, which is keenly 
conscious of unity in multiplicity—of God in the world—all 
disinterested service is service of the Absolute which he loves: 
and the harder it is, the more opposed to his self-regarding 
and zesthetic instincts, the more nearly it approaches his ideal. 
The point to which he aspires—though he does not always 
know it—is that in which all disharmony, all appearance of 
vileness, is resolved in the concrete reality which he calls the 
Love of God. Then, he feels dimly, everything will be seen 
under the aspect of a cosmic and charitable beauty ; exhibiting 
through the woof of corruption the web of eternal life. 

It is told of St. Francis of Assisi, in whom the love of 
lovely things was always paramount, how he forced himself 
to visit the lepers whose sight and smell disgusted him: how 
he served them and even kissed them. “Then as he departed, 
in very truth that which had aforetime been bitter unto him, to 
wit, the sight and touch of lepers, now changed into sweet- 
ness, For, as he confessed, the sight of lepers had been so 
grievous unto him that he had been minded to avoid not only 
‘seeing them, but even going nigh their dwelling. And if at any © 
time he chanced to pass their abodes, or to see them, albeit he - 
were moved by compassion to do them an alms through another 
person, yet alway would he turn aside his face, stopping his 
nostrils with his hand. But through the grace of God he 
became so intimate a friend of the lepers that, even as he 
recorded in his will, he did sojourn with them and did humbly 
serve them.” 

Also, after his great renunciation of all property, he, once a 
prosperous young man who had been “dainty in his father’s 


* Thomas of Celano, Legenda Prima, cap. vii. ; 3 Soc. cap. iv, 


270 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


home,” accustomed himself to take a bowl and beg scraps of 
food from door to door: and here too, as in the case of the. 
lepers, that which at first seemed revolting became to him 
sweet. “And when he would have eaten that medley of 
various meats,” says the legend, “at first he shrank back, for 
that he had never been used willingly even to see, much less 
to eat, such scraps. At length, conquering himself, he began 
to eat; and it seemed to him that in eating no rich syrup had 
he ever tasted aught so delightsome.” ! 

The object, then, of this self-discipline is, like the object of 
all purgation, freedom: freedom from the fetters of the senses, 
the ‘“‘remora of desire,” from the results of environment ‘and 
worldly education, from pride and prejudice, preferences and 
distaste: from selfhood in every form. Its effect is a sharp 
reaction to the joy of self-conquest. The very act that had 
once caused in the enchained self a movement of loathing 
becomes not merely indifferent, but an occasion of happiness. 
So Margery Kempe “had great mourning and sorrowing if she 
might not kiss a leper when she met them in the way for the 
love of our Lord, whzch was all contrary to her disposition in the 
years of her youth and prosperity, for then she abhorred them 
most.” 2 

I will spare the sensitive reader a detailed account of the 
loathsome ordeals by which St. Catherine of Genoa and 
Madame Guyon strove to cure themselves of squeamishness 3 
and acquire this liberty of spirit. They, like St. Francis, St. 
Elizabeth of Hungary, and countless other seekers for the Real, 
sought out and served with humility and love the sick and the 
unclean: associated themselves at all costs with life in its 
meanest forms: compelled themselves to contact with the most 
revolting substances: and tried to suppress the surface-con- 
sciousness by the traditional ascetic expedient of deliberately 
opposing all—even its most natural and harmless—inclinations, 
“In the first four years after she received the sweet wound from 
her Lord,” says the Life of Catherine of Genoa, she “ made great 





« 3 Soc. cap. vii. 
2 « A Short Treatise of Contemplation taken out of the boke of Margery Kempe | 
ancresse of Lynne.” London, 1521. This has been reprinted by Mr. E. Gardner | 
in “The Cell of Self-Knowledge,”’ 1910, p. 49. 3 
3 The curious are referred to the original authorities. For St. Catherine, | 
chapter viii. of the Vita e Dottrina: for Madame Guyon, Vie, pt. i. ch. x. 





THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 271 


penances: so that all her senses were mortified. And first, so 
soon as she perceived that her nature desired anything, at once 
she deprived it thereof, and did so that it should receive all 
those things that it abhorred. She wore harsh hair, ate no meat 
nor any other thing that she liked ; ate no fruit neither fresh nor 
dried . . . and she lived greatly submitted to all persons, and 
always sought to do all those things which were contrary to her 
own will; in such a way that she was always inclined to do more 
promptly the will of others than her own.” . . . “And while she 
worked such and so many mortifications of all her senses it was 
several times asked of her ‘Why do you do this?’ And she 
answered, ‘I do not know, but I feel myself drawn inwardly to 
do this . . . and I think it is God’s will.’” 

St. Ignatius Loyola, in the world a highly bred Spanish 
gentleman of refined personal habits, found in those habits an 
excellent opportunity of mortification. “As he was somewhat 
nice about the arrangement of his hair, as was the fashion of 
those days and became him not ill, he allowed it to grow 
naturally, and neither combed it nor trimmed it nor wore any 
head covering by day or night. For the same reason he did not 
pare his finger or toe nails; for on these points he had been 
fastidious to an extreme.” 2 

Madame Guyon, a delicate girl of the leisured class, ac- 
customed to the ordinary comforts of her station, seemed 
impelled to the most primitive and crude forms of mortification 
in her efforts towards the acquirement of “indifference.” But, 
owing no doubt to the peculiar psychic constitution which after- 
wards showed itself in the forms of automatism and clairvoyance, 
her intense concentration upon the transcendental life produced 
a partial anesthesia. “Although I had a very delicate body, 
the instruments of penitence tore my flesh without, as it seemed 
to me, causing pain. I wore girdles of hair and of sharp iron, 
I often held wormwood in my mouth.” “If I walked, I put 
stones in my shoes, These things, my God, Thou didst first 
inspire me to do, in order that I might be deprived even of the 
most innocent satisfactions.” 3 

The developing mystical consciousness made ever sharper 
and sharper war upon Madame Guyon’s delicate and fastidious 


* Vita e Dottrina, cap. v. 2 Testament, cap ii, (Rix’s translation), 
3 Vie, pt. i. cap. x, 


279 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


surface-personality. The impulses from below the threshold, so 
utterly at variance with her own instincts, imposed themselves 
upon her with an authority which seemed to her to possess all 
the marks of divine commands. “ Thou wert continually with 
me, Oh my God! and Thou wert so severe a taskmaster that 
Thou wouldst not let me pass over the smallest things. When 
I thought of doing anything, Thou didst stop me abruptly and 
- madest me to do wiphout thinking all Thy desires, and all that 
was most repugnant to my senses, until they were become so 
docile that they had no longer either desire or distaste for 
anything. ... I did nothing of myself, but I let myself be led 
by my King, who ruled me absolutely in all things.” 

The procuring of this ascendancy of the “interior man,” the 
transcendental consciousness, over the distracted and normal 
personality which deals with the manifold illusions of daily life, 
is, as we have seen, the main business of Purgation. It is, then, 
almost impossible that any mystic—whatever his religion, 
character or race—should escape its battles: for none at the 
beginning of their career are in a position to dispense with its 
good offices. Neoplatonists and Mahommedans, no less than 
the Christian ascetics, are acquainted with the Purgative Way. 
They all know the primal secret of the Spiritual Alchemists, 
that you must tame the Green Lion before you give him wings. 
Thus in ’Attar’s allegory of the Valleys, the valley of self- 
stripping and renunciation comes first.2 So too Al Ghazzali, the 


Persian contemplative of whom I have already spoken, says of | 


the period immediately following his acceptance of the prin- 
ciples of Sifi-ism and consequent renunciation of property, “I 
went to Syria, where I remained more than two years, without 
any other object than that of living in seclusion and solitude, 


* conquering my desires, struggling with my passions, striving to | 
purify my soul, to perfect my character, and to prepare my | 
heart to meditate upon God.” At the end of this period of | 
pure purgation circumstances forced him to return to the world, | 
much to his regret, since he “had not yet attained to the perfect | 


ecstatic state, unless it were in one or two isolated moments.” 3 


Such sporadic gleams of ecstatic vision, distributed through 


the later stages of purification, seem to be normal features of 


* Of. cit., loc. cit. . 2 Supra, p. 156. 
3 Schmdlders, ‘‘ Essai sur les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes,” p. 59. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 273 


mystical development. Increasing control of the lower centres, 
of the surface intelligence and its scattered desires, permits the 
emergence of the transcendental perceptions. We have seen 
that Fox in his early stages displayed just such an alternation 
between the light and shade of the mystic way.t So too did 
that least ascetic of visionaries, Jacob Boehme. “ Finding 
within myself a powerful contrarium, namely the desires that 
belong to the flesh and blood,” he says, “I began to fight a 
hard battle against my corrupted nature, and with the aid of 
God I made up my mind to overcome the inherited evil will, to 
break it, and to enter wholly into the Love of God. ... This, 
however, was not possible for me to accomplish, but I stood 
firmly by my earnest resolution, and fought a hard battle with 
myself. Now while I was wrestling and battling, being aided ~ 
by God, a wonderful light arose within my soul. It was a light 
entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognized the 
true nature of God and man, and the relation existing between ~ 
them, a thing which heretofore I had never understood, and for 
which I would never have sought.” 2 

In these words Boehme bridges the gap between Purgation 
and Illumination: showing these two states or ways as co- 
existing and complementary one to another ; forming the light 
and dark sides of a developing mystic consciousness. As a 
fact, they do often exist side by side in the individual ex- 
perience :3 and any treatment which exhibits them as sharply 
and completely separated may be convenient for purposes of 
study, but becomes at best diagrammatic if considered as a - 
representation of the mystic life. The mystical consciousness, 
as we have seen, belongs—from the psychological point of view 
—to that mobile or “unstable” type in which the artistic 
temperament also finds a place. It sways easily between the 
extremes of pleasure and pain in its gropings after transcen- 
dental reality. It often attains for a moment to heights 
in which it is not able to rest: is often flung from some 
rapturous vision of the Perfect to the deeps of contrition 
and despair. 

The mystics have a vivid metaphor by which to describe 


* Supra, p. 215. 

? Hartmann, ‘‘ Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme,” p. 50. 

3 Compare the case of St. Teresa already cited, supra, p. 257. 
T ‘ 


274 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


that alternation between the onset and the absence of the 
joyous transcendental consciousness which forms as it were the 
characteristic intermediate stage between the bitter struggles of 


- pure Purgation, and the peace and splendour of the Illuminative 


4 


Life. They call it Ludus Amorts, the “Game of Love” which 
God plays with the desirous soul. It is the “game of chess,” 
says St. Teresa, “in which game Humility is the Queen without 


- whom none can checkmate the Divine King.”! “ Here,” says 


Martensen, “God plays a blest game with the soul.”2 The 
“Game of Love” belongs emphatically to that state of imper- 
fection, of struggle, oscillation and unrest which precedes the 
first unification of the self. Once this event has taken place, 
the new level of reality has been attained, it is known no more. 
Thus St. Catherine of Siena, that inspired psychologist, was 
told in ecstasy, “ With the souls who have arrived at perfection, 
I play no more the Game of Love, which consists in leaving and 
returning again to the soul; though thou must understand that 
it is not, properly speaking, I, the immovable GOD, Who thus 
elude them, but rather the sentiment that My charity gives 
them of Me.’ 3 In other terms, it is the imperfectly developed 
spiritual perception. which becomes tired and fails, throwing 
the self back into the darkness and aridity whence it has 
emerged. | 

So with Madame Guyon, periods of “dryness ”—the orthodox 
name for such spiritual fatigue—recurred at intervals during the 
whole of the Illuminated Life. So we are told of Rulman 
Merswin4 that after the period of harsh physical mortification 
which succeeded his conversion came a year of “delirious joy 
alternating with the most bitter physical and moral sufferings.” 
It is, he says, “the Game of Love which the Lord plays with 
His poor sinful creature.” Memories of all his old sins still 
drove him to exaggerated penances : morbid temptations “ made 
meso ill that I feared I should lose my reason.” These psychic 
storms reacted upon the physical organism. He had a para- 
lytic seizure, lost the use of his lower limbs, and believed 
himself to be at the point of death. When he was at his 


* «Camino de Perfeccion,” cap. xvii. 

? Martensen, ‘‘ Meister Eckhart,” p. 75. 

3. Dialogo, cap. Ixxviii. 

4 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,” pp. 19 and 20. 


THE PURIFICATION OF THE SELF 275 


worst, however, and ali hope seemed at an end, an inward 
voice told him to rise from his bed. He obeyed and found 
himself cured. Ecstasies were frequent during the whole of 
this period. In these moments of exaltation he felt his mind 
to be irradiated by a new light, so that he knew, intuitively, the 
direction which his life was bound to take, and recognized the 
inevitable and salutary nature of his trials. “God showed 
Himself by turns harsh and gentle: to each access of misery 
succeeded the rapture of supernatural grace.” In this inter- 
mittent style, torn by these constant fluctuations, did Merswin, 
in whom the psychic instability of the artistic and mystic types 
is present in excess, pass through the purgative and illuminated 
states. They appear to have coexisted in his consciousness, 
first one and then the other emerging and taking control. 
Hence he did not attain the peaceful condition which is 
characteristic of full illumination and normally closes the 
“First Mystic Life.” He passed direct from these violent 
alternations of mystical pleasure and mystical pain to the 
state which he calls “the school of suffering love.” This, as 
we shall see when we come to its consideration, is strictly 
analogous to that which other mystics have called the “ Dark 
Night of the Soul” and opens the “Second Mystic Life” or 
Unitive Way. 

Such prolonged coexistence of pain and pleasure states in 
the developing soul, such delay in the attainment of equi- 
librium, is not infrequent, and must be taken into account in 
all attempts towards analysis of the mystic type. Though it is 
convenient for the purposes of study to practise a certain dis- 
section, and treat as separate matters which are, in the living 
subject, hopelessly intertwined, we should constantly remind 
ourselves that such a proceeding is artificial The struggle of 
the self to disentangle itself from illusion and attain the 
Absolute is a life-struggle. Hence, it will and must exhibit 
in every case something of the freedom and originality of life: 
will, as a process, obey artistic rather than scientific laws. It 
will sway now to the light and now to the shade of experience: 
its oscillations will sometimes be great, sometimes small. Mood 
and environment, inspiration and information, will all play their 
part. 

There are in this struggle three factors. 


276 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


(1) The unchanging light of Eternal Reality: that Pure 
Being “which ever shines and nought shall ever dim.” 

(2) The web of illusion, here thick, there thin, which hems 
in, confuses, and allures the sentient self. 

(3) That self, always changing, moving, struggling—always, 
in fact, decoming—alive in every fibre, related at once to the 
unreal and to the real. 

In the ever-shifting relations between these three factors, the 
- consequent energy engendered, the work done, we may find a 
cause of the innumerable forms of stress and travail which are 
called in their objective form the Purgative Way. One only of 
the three is constant: the Absolute to which the soul aspires. 
Though all else may fluctuate, that goal is changeless. That 
Beauty so old and so new, “with whom is no variableness, 
neither shadow of turning,” which is the One of Plotinus, the 
All of Eckhart and St. John of the Cross, the Eternal Wisdom 
of Suso, the Unplumbed Abyss of Ruysbroeck, the Pure Love 
of St. Catherine of Genoa—awaits yesterday, to-day, and for 
ever the opening of Its creature’s eyes. 

In the moment of conversion those eyes were opened for an 
instant: obtained, as it were, a dazzling and unforgettable 
glimpse of the Uncreated Light. They must learn to stay 
open: to look steadfastly into the eyes of Love: so that, in the 
beautiful imagery of the mystics, the “faithful servant” may 
become the “secret friend.” Then it is, says Boehme, that “the 
divine glimpse and beam of joy ariseth in the soul, being a new 
eye, in which the dark, fiery soul conceiveth the Ens and 
Essence of the divine light.”2 So hard an art is not to be 
acquired abruptly. On the contrary, it is. more in accordance 
with all that we know of the conditions of growth that its 
perfect development in the individual should be preceded by 
a partial acquirement; by bewildering moments of lucidity, 
by splendid glimpses, whose brevity is due to the weakness 
of the new and still unpractised “eye which looks upon 
Eternity,” the yet undisciplined strength of the “eye which 
looks upon Time.” Of such a nature is that play of light and 
dark, of exaltation and contrition, which bridges the gap 

* See Denis the Carthusian, ‘‘ De Contemplatione,” bk. iii, The metaphor is 


an ancient one and occurs in many patristic and medieval writers. 
* “* The Epistles of Jacob Boehme,” p. 1g. 


* 


THE PURIFICATION ON THE SELF 277 


between the Purgative and the Illuminative states. Each by 
turn takes the field and ousts the other; for “these two eyes 
of the soul of man cannot both perform their work at once.” 

To use another and more domestic metaphor, that Divine 
Child which was, in the hour of the mystic conversion, born in 
the spark of the soul, must learn like other children to walk 
alone. Each effort to stand brings with it, first a glorious sense 
of growth and then a fall: each fall is but the occasion of 
another struggle towards obtaining the difficult balance which 
comes when infancy is past. There are many eager trials, 
many hopes, many disappointments. At last, as it seems 
suddenly, the moment comes: tottering is over, the muscles 
have learnt their lesson, they adjust themselves automatically, 
and the new self suddenly perceives itself—it knows not how— 
as standing upright and secure. That is the moment which 
marks the real boundary between the purgative and the 
illuminative states. 

The process of this passage of the “new” or spiritual man 
from his awakening to the illuminated life, has been set out by 
Jacob Boehme in language which is at once poetic and precise. 
“When Christ the Corner-Stone [#.¢., the divine principle latent 
in man] stirreth himself in the extinguished Image of Man 
in his hearty Conversion and Repentance,” he says, “then 
Virgin Sophia appeareth in the stirring of the Spirit of Christ 
in the extinguished Image, in her Virgin’s attire before the 
Soul; at which the Soul is so amazed and astonished in its 
Uncleannéss that all its Sins immediately awake in it, and it 
trembleth before her ; for then the judgment passeth upon the 
Sins of the Soul, so that it even goeth back in its unworthiness, | 
being ashamed in the Presence of its fair Love, and entereth . 
into itself, feeling and acknowledging itself utterly unworthy to 
receive such a Jewel. This is understood by those who are of 
our tribe and have tasted of this heavenly Gift, and by none 
else. But the noble Sophia draweth near in the Essence of the 
Soul, and kisseth it in friendly Manner, and tinctureth its dark . 
Fire with her Rays of Love, and shineth through it with her 
bright and powerful Influence. Penetrated with the strong 
Sense and Feeling of which, the Soul skippeth in its Body for 
great Joy, and in the strength of this Virgin Love exulteth, 


* «* Theologia Germanica,” cap. ‘vii. 


278 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


and praiseth the great God for his blest Gift of Grace. I will 
set down here a short description how it is when the Bride thus 
embraceth the Bridegroom, for the consideration of the Reader, 
who perhaps hath not yet been in this wedding chamber. It 
may be he will be desirous to follow us, and to enter into the 
Inner Choir, where the Soul joineth hands and danceth with . 
Sophia, or the Divine Wisdom.”? 


* Jacob Boehme, ‘‘ The Way to Christ,” pt. i. p. 23 (vol. iv. of the complete — 
English translation of Boehme’s works). 


CHAPTER IV 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 


Illumination, tne characteristic mystical consciousness—Many artists attain to it— 
Part of the normal process of transcendence—Its nature—Plotinus—The ‘‘ mystic 
dance ” — Distinctive character of Illumination—‘‘ Nature mysticism ”—IIlumina- 
tion and the mysteries—Mystic and artist—The chalice of the Spirit of Life—Various 
forms and grades of illumination—It always seems final to the mystic—Must be 
expressed artistically—Often received in visionary form—Three marks of this state— 
(1) The sense of Divine Presence, (2) the lucid vision of the world, (3) automatic 
activity — Twofold character of the illuminated consciousness — Sense of the 
Presence of God—The source of mystic joy—-St. Teresa—The orison of union— 
St. Bernard— Hugh of St. Victor—Distinction between orison of union and 
unitive life—The ‘‘sense of the Presence” and active life—Brother Lawrence— 
Passivity—Madame Guyon—St. Catherine of Genoa and illumination—Nature of 
illumination—An access of new light—Jacopone da Todi—Law—St. Augustine— 
The Vision of Reality—Dante—Angela of Foligno—Transcendent and Personal 
illumination—Suso—The illuminated vision of the world—its nature—Jacob Boehme 
—Fox—Blake—The mystics and animal life—St. Francis of Assisi—St. Rose of 
Lima—Platonism and illumination —Plotinus—The Kabalah—Law—Illumination a 
half-way house—It cannot give final satisfaction to the spiritual consciousness 


tion of that state of consciousness which is popularly 

supposed to be peculiar to the mystic: a form of mental 
life, a kind of perception, which is radically different from that 
of “normal” men. His preceding adventures and experiences 
cannot be allowed this quality. His awakening to conscious- 
ness of the Absolute—though it be often accompanied by 
circumstances of splendour and intensity which seem to mark 
it off from other psychic upheavals of that kind—does but 
reproduce upon higher levels those characteristic processes of 
conversion and falling in love which give depth and actuality 
to the religious and passional life. The purification to which 
he then sets himself—though this does as a rule possess certain 


features which are confined to the phenomena of mystical 
279 


T Illumination we come for the first time to the considera- 


280 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


development—is again closely related to the mortifications 
of ascetic, but not necessarily mystical, piety. It is the most 
exalted form with which we are acquainted of that process 
of selection and self-discipline—that pruning and training of 
the human plant—which is the essence of all education and 
a necessary stage in every kind of transcendence. Here, the 
mystic does but adopt in a more drastic shape the principles 
which all who would live with an intense life, all seekers after 
freedom, all true lovers must accept: though he may justly 
claim with Ophelia that these wear their rue with a difference. 

But in the mighty swing back into sunshine which is the 
reward of that painful descent into the “ cell of self-knowledge,” 
he parts company with these other pilgrims. Those who still 
go with him a little way—certain prophets, poets, artists, 
dreamers—do so in virtue of that mystical genius, that instinct 
for transcendental reality, which seers and creators so often 
possess. These people have a measure—sometimes a large 
measure—of illumination: they are the initiates of beauty 
or of wisdom, as the great mystic is the initiate of love. He 
has now obtained a veritable foothold in that transcendental 
world into which they too can penetrate now and again: has 
acquired the art of fellowship—not yet of union—with the 
“sreat life of the All,’ and thence draws strength and joy. 
Really and actually, as one whose noviciate is finished, he has 
“entered the Inner Choir, where the Soul joineth hands and 
danceth with Sophia, the Divine Wisdom”: and, keeping time 
with the great rhythms of the spiritual universe, feels that he 
has found his place. 

This change of consciousness, however abrupt and amazing 
it may seem to the self which experiences it, seems to the 
psychologist a normal incident of that organic process of 
development which was initiated by the first awakening of 
the transcendental sense. Responding to the intimations re- 
ceived in that awakening, ordering itself in their interest, con- 
centrating its scattered energies on this one thing, the self 
emerges from long and varied acts of purification to find that 
it has pushed through to another order of reality. It has 
risen to acute consciousness of a world that was always there, 
and wherein its substantial being—that Ground which is of 
God—has always stood. Such a consciousness is “ Transcen- 


' 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 281 


dental Feeling” zm” excelsts: a deep, intuitional knowledge of 
the “secret plan.” 

As a chorus about its choragus, says Plotinus in a passage 
which strangely anticipates Boehme’s metaphor, so do we all 
perpetually revolve about the Principle of all Things. But 
because our attention is diverted by looking at things foreign 
to the choir—all the foolish complexities of the world of 
appearance, the little diurnal incidents of that existence 
which we call life—we are not aware of this. Hence, instead 
of that free and conscious co-operation in the great life of the 
All which alone can make personal life worth living, we move 
like slaves or marionettes, and, oblivious of the whole to which 
our little steps contribute, fail to observe the measure “ whereto 
the worlds keep time.” Our minds being distracted from the 
Corypheus in the midst, the “energetic Word” who sets the 
rhythm, we do not behold Him. We are absorbed in the illu- 
sions of sense; the “eye which looks on Eternity” is idle, 
“ But when we do behold Him,” says Plotinus, “then we obtain 
the end of our wishes, and rest. Then also we are no longer 
discordant, but form a truly divine dance about Him; in the 
which dance the soul beholds the Fountain of life, the Fountain 
of intellect, the Principle of Being, the cause of good, the root 
of soul.”* Such a beholding, such a lifting of consciousness 
from a self-centred to a God-centred world, is of the essence of 
illumination. | 

It will be observed that in these passages the claim of the 
mystic is not yet to supreme communion, to that “flight of 
the Alone to the Alone” which is the Plotinian image for the 
utmost bliss of the emancipated soul. <A vision, and a know- 
ledge, which is the result of conscious harmony with the 
divine World of Becoming, is the ideal held out: not self- 
mergence in the Principle of Life, but willing and harmonious 


* Plotinus, Ennead vi. 9. Compare with this image of the rhythmic dance of 
things about a divine Corypheus in the midst, those strikingly parallel passages in the 
Apocryphal ‘‘ Hymn of Jesus” where the Logos or Christ, standing within the circle 
of disciples, says, ‘‘I am the Word who did play and dance all things.” ‘‘ Now answer 
to My dancing.” ‘“ Understand by dancing what I do.” Again, ‘‘ Who danceth not 
knoweth not what is being done.” ‘I would pipe, dance ye all!” and presently the 
rubric declares, ‘*‘ All whose Nature is to dance, doth dance!” (See Dr. M. R. 
James, ‘‘ Apocrypha Anecdota,” series 2; and G. R. S. Mead, “Echoes from the 
Gnosis ; the Dance of Jesus.” Compare supra, p. 159.) 


282 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


revolution about Him, that “in dancing we may know what is 
done.” This distinction holds good in almost every first-hand 
description of illumination which we possess: and it is this 
which marks it off from mystic union in all its forms. All 
pleasurable and exalted states of mystic consciousness in which 
the sense of I-hood persists, in which there is a loving and 
joyous relation between the Absolute as object and the self 
as subject, fall under the head of Illumination: which is really 
an enormous development of the intuitional life at high levels. 
All veritable and first-hand apprehensions of the Divine obtained 
by the use of symbols, as in the religious life; all phases of 
poetic inspiration, “glimpses of truth,” are activities of the 
illuminated mind. 

To “see God in nature,” to attain a radiant consciousness of 
the “ otherness ” of natural things, is the simplest and commonest 
form of illumination. Most people, under the spell of emotion 
or of beauty, have known flashes of rudimentary vision of this 
kind. Where such a consciousness is permanent, as it is in 
many poets,! there results that partial yet often overpowering 
apprehension of the Infinite Life immanent in all living things > 
which some modern writers have dignified by the name of 
“nature-mysticism.” Where it is raised to its highest denomi- | 
nation, till the veil is obliterated by the light behind, and 
“faith has vanished into sight,’ we obtain such a case as that 
of Blake, in which the mystic swallows up the poet. 

“Dear Sir,” says that great genius in one of his most character- 
istic letters, written immediately after an onset of the illuminated 
vision which he had lost for many years, “excuse my enthusiasm, | 
or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision / 
whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.”2 Many a = 
great painter, philosopher, or poet, perhaps every inspired | 
musician, has known this indescribable inebriation of Reality | 
in those moments of transcendence in which his masterpieces | 
were conceived. This is the “saving madness” of which Plato | 
speaks in the “Phaedrus”; the ecstasy of the “ God-intoxicated | 
man,” the lover, the prophet, and the poet “drunk with life.” | 
When the Christian mystic, eager for his birthright, says | 
“Sanguis Christi, inebria me!” he is asking for just such =| 


* For instance, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Whitman. 
* * Letters of William Blake,” p. 171. 






THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 283 


gift of supernal vitality, a draught of that Wine of Absolute 
‘Life which runs in the arteries of the world. Those to whom 
that cup is given attain to an intenser degree of vitality, hence 
to a more acute degree of perception, a more vivid conscious- 
ness, than that which is enjoyed by other men. It is the 
prize of which purgation is the price, the passing “from death 
unto life.” 

_ Blake conceived that it was his vocation to bring this 
inystical illumination, this vision of reality, within the purview 
of ordinary men: to “cleanse the doors of perception” of the 
race. They thought him a madman for his pains. 


| “ , .. I rest not trom my great task 


' To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes 

| Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity 
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination. 
O Saviour, pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness and love, 
Annihilate the Selfhood in me: be thou all my life.’ * 


The Mysteries of the antique world were, one and_ ll, 
attempts—often by the wrong road of a merely magical 
initiation—to “open the immortal eyes of man inwards”: exalt 
his powers of perception until they could receive the messages 
of a higher degree of reality. In spite of much eager theorizing, 
it is impossible for us to tell how far they succeeded in this 
task. In the case of those who had a natural genius for the 
Infinite, symbols and rituals which were doubtless charged 
with ecstatic suggestions, and which often dramatized the 
actual course of the Mystic Way, may well have brought about 
some change of consciousness :? though hardly that complete 
fearrangement of character which is an essential part of the 
mystic’s entrance on the true Illuminated State. Hence Plato 
only claims that “he whose initiation is recent” can see 
[mmortal Beauty under mortal veils 


““O blesséd he in all wise, 
Who hath drunk the Living Fountain, 





* “*Jerusalem,” cap. i. 
* Compare J. E. Harrison, “ Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,” 


"aps. ix., x., and xi.; a work which puts the most favourable construction possible on 
he meaning of Orphic initiation. | | 








284 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Whose life no folly staineth 

And whose soul is near to God : 
Whose sins are lifted pall-wise 
As he worships on the Mountain. 


Thus sang the initiates of Dionysus; that mystery-cult in which 
the Greeks seem to have expressed all that they knew of the 
possible movement of consciousness through rites of purifi. 
cation to the ecstasies of the Illuminated Life. The mere crude 
rapture of illumination has seldom been more vividly expressed 
With its half-Oriental fervours, its self-regarding glory ir 
personal purification achieved, and the spiritual superiority 
conferred by adeptship, may be compared the deeper anc 
lovelier experience of the Catholic poet and saint, who repre 
sents the spirit of Western mysticism at its best. His sins 
too, had been “lifted pall-wise ” as a cloud melts in the sunshini 
of Divine Love: but here the centre of interest is not the litth 
self which has been exalted, but the greater Self which deign 
thus to exalt. - 















‘*O burn that burns to heal! 
O more than pleasant wound ! 
And O soft hand, O touch most delicate, 
That dost new life reveal, 
That dost in grace abound 
And, slaying, dost from death to life translate.” ? 


Here the joy is as passionate, the consciousness of ar 
exalted life as intense: but it is dominated by the distinctiv: 
Christian concepts of humility, surrender, and intimate love. 

We have seen that all real artists, as well as all puri 
mystics, are sharers to some degree in the Illuminated Life 
are sojourners in, if not true citizens of, the land of heart’ 
desire. They have drunk, with Blake, from that cup of intel) 
lectual vision which is the chalice of the Spirit of Life: knov 
something of its divine inebriation whenever Beauty inspire 
them to create. Some have only sipped it. Some, like Johi 
of Parma, have drunk deep; accepting in that act the mysti 
heritage with all its obligations. But to all who have see 
Beauty face to face, the Grail has been administered; an 


t The “ Bacchae ” of Euripides (translated by Gilbert Murray), p. 83. 
2 St. John of the Cross, ‘* Llama de Amor Viva ” (translated by Arthur Symons), 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 285 


through that sacramental communion they are made participants 
n the mystery of the world. 

In one of the most beautiful passages of the “Fioretti” it is 
iold how Brother Jacques of la Massa, “unto whom God 
ypened the door of His secrets,” saw in a vision this Chalice 
of the Spirit of Life delivered by Christ into the hands of St. 
Francis, that he might give his brothers to drink thereof. 

“Then came St. Francis to give the chalice of life to his 
rothers: and he gave it first to Brother John of Parma: who, 
aking it, drank it all in haste, devoutly; and straightway he 
xecame all shining like the sun. And after him St. Francis 
save it to all the other brothers in order: and there were but 
ew among them that took it with due reverence and devotion 
ind drank it all. Those that took it devoutly and drank it all, 
ecame straightway shining like the sun ; but those that spilled 
t all and took it not devoutly, became black, and dark, and 
nisshapen and horrible to see; but those that drank part and 
ipilled part, became partly shining and partly dark, and more 
io or less according to the measure of their drinking or spilling 
hereof. But the aforesaid Brother John was resplendent above 
ll the rest, the which had more completely drunk the chalice 
f life, whereby he had the more deeply gazed into the abyss of the 
njinete light divine.” * 

No image, perhaps, could suggest so accurately as this divine 
victure the conditions of perfect illumination : the drinking 
leeply, devoutly, and in haste—that is, without prudent and 
elf-regarding hesitation—of the heavenly Wine of Life ; that 
vine of which Rolle says that it “fulfils the soul with a great 
sladness through a sweet contemplation.”2 John of Parma, the 
‘ero of the Spiritual Franciscans in whose interest this exquisite 
illegory was composed, stands for all the mystics, who, “ having 
‘completely drunk,” have attained the power of gazing into the 
tbyss of the infinite light divine. In the brothers who drank 
vart and spilled part, so that they became partly shining and 
vartly dark, “according to the measure of their drinking or 
ipilling thereof,” we may see an apt image of the artist, 
Musician, prophet, poet, dreamer, more or less illuminated 
\ccording to the measure of self-abandonment in which he has 


* **Fioretti,’”’ cap. xlviii. (Arnold’s translation). 
* “ Richard Rolle of Hampole,” ed. Horstman, vol. ii. p. 79. 
\ 4 


286 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


drunk the cup of ecstasy : but always, in comparison with the 
radiance ot the pure contemplative, “ partly shining and partly 
dark.” “Hinder me not,” says the soul to the senses in Mech- 
thild of Magdeburg’s vision, “I would drink for a space of the 
unmingled wine.” 1 In the artist, the senses have somewhat 
hindered the perfect inebriation of the soul. 

We have seen that a vast tract of experience—all the 
experience, in fact, which results from contact between a purged 
and heightened consciousness and the,World of Becoming in 
which it is immersed ; and much, too, of that which results from 
contact set up between such a consciousness and the Absolute 
Itself—is included in that stage of growth which the mystics 
call the Illuminative Way. This is the largest and most 
densely populated province of the mystic kingdom. Such 
disparate visionaries as Suso and Blake, Boehme and Madame 
Guyon, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Fox, Rolle, St, Teresa, and 
countless others have left us the record of their sojourn therein, 
Amongst those who cannot justly be reckoned as pure mystics 
we can detect in the works of Plato and Heracleitus, Words- 
worth, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman certain indications that 
they too were acquainted, beyond most poets and seers, with 
the phenomena of the illuminated life. In our study of this 
degree of transcendence, then, we shall be confronted by a large 
mass of apparently irreconcilable material : the results of the 
relation set up between every degree of lucidity, every kind oi 
character, and the suprasensible world. 

To say that God is Infinite is to say that He may be appre- 
hended and described in an infinity of ways. That Circle whose 
centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, may 
be approached from every angle with a certainty of being found, 
Mystical history, particularly that which is concerned with the 
Illuminative Way, is a demonstration of this fact. Here, in the 
establishment of the “first mystic life,’ of conscious correspon- 
dence with Reality, the self which has oscillated between two 
forms of consciousness, has alternately opposed and embraced 
its growing intuitions of the Absolute, comes for a time to rest, 
To a large extent, the discordant elements of character have 
been purged away. The “dark night of the senses” has been 
endured : though the more terrible “ night of the spirit ” is yet 


* «€ Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt. i. cap. 43. 








THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 287 


to come. Temporally at least the mind has “unified itself” 
upon high levels, and attained, as it believes, a perdurable 
consciousness of the divine and veritable world. The depth 
and richness of its own nature will determine how intense that 
consciousness shall be. 3 

Whatever its scope, however, this new apprehension of 
reality at first appears to the Illuminated Self as final and 
complete. As the true lover is always convinced that he has 
found in his bride the one Rose of the World, so the mystic 
is sure that his quest is now fulfilled. In the first glow of his 
initiation into the “ Perfect Land” he can conceive no higher 
rapture than this: no more intimate adventure of the soul. 
Ignorant as yet of that final act of communion which over- 
passes the proceedings of the inward eye and ear, he exclaims 
with entire assurance, “Beati oculi qui exterioribus clausi, 
interioribus autem sunt intenti,” and, absorbed in this new bliss- 
ful act of vision, forgets that it belongs to those who are still 
tz via. More experience is needed if he is to learn how many 
more celestial secrets await his discovery ; how powerless is the 
heavenly food here given to satisfy his “hunger for the Abso- 
lute”; how far removed from the true End of Being is this 
basking in the sunbeams of the Uncreated Light, this revolving 
‘about the Principle of Things. Only the very greatest souls, 
the Galahads of the quest, learn this lesson and tread the whole 
of that “ King’s Highway ” which leads man back to his source. 
“For the many that come to Bethlehem, there be few that 
will go on to Calvary.” The rest stay here, in this Earthly 
Paradise, these flowery fields ; where the liberated self wanders 
at will, describing to us as well as it can now this corner, now 
that, of the Country of the Soul. 

It is in these descriptions of the joy of illumination—in the 
outpourings of love and rapture belonging to this state—that 
we shall find the most lyrical passages of mystical literature. 
Here poet, mystic, and musician are on common ground : for 
it is only by the oblique methods of the artist, only by the use 
of xsthetic suggestion and musical rhythm, that the wonder 
of that vision can be expressed. When essential goodness, 
truth, and beauty—Light, Life, and Love—are apprehended 
by the heart, whether the heart be that of lover, painter, saint, 


* * De Imitatione Christi,” 1. iii. cap. i. 


288 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


that apprehension can only be adequately communicated in 
a living, that is to say, an artistic form. 

Here, then, genius and sanctity kiss one another, and each, 
in that sublime encounter, looks for an instant through the 
other’s eyes. Hence it is natural and inevitable that the 
mystic should here call into play all the resources of artistic 
expression: the lovely imagery of Julian and Mechthild of 
Magdeburg, Suso’s poetic visions, St. Augustine’s fire and light, 
the heavenly harmonies of St. Francis and Richard Rolle. 
Symbols, too, play a vast part, not only in the description, but 
also in the machinery of illumination: the intuitions of many 
mystics presenting themselves directly to the surface-mind in a 
symbolic form. We must therefore be prepared for a great 
variety and fluidity of expression in such writers as have tried 
to communicate to us the secret of this state of consciousness. 
We must examine, and even classify in so far as this is possible, 
a wide variety of experience : some which is recognized by 
friends and foes alike as purely “ mystical,’ some in which the 
operation of poetic imagination is clearly discernible, some 
which involves “psychic phenomena” and other abnormal 
activities of the mind. There is no use in being frightened 
away from investigation by the strange, and apparently 
irreconcilable aspect of these things. The wounds of Truth 
are as faithful as the wounds of a friend. 

Now there are three main types of experience which appear 
over and over again in the history of mysticism ; and always in 
connection with illumination, rather than any other phase of 
mystical development. I think that they may fairly be 
regarded as its main characteristics, though of course the 
discussion of them cannot cover all the ground. In few forms 
of life is the spontaneity of the individual so clearly seen as 
here: and in few is the ever-deadly process of classification 
attended with so many risks. | 

The three characteristics which I propose to consider are | 
these :— | 

1. A joyous apprehension of the Absolute : that which many 
ascetic writers call “the practice of the Presence of God.” This, | 
however, is not to be confused with that unique consciousness 
of union with the divine which is peculiar to a later stage of | 
mystical development. The self, though purified, still seems to | 


| 





THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 289 


itself to exist as a separate entity. It is not immersed in its 
Origin, but contemplates it. This is the “betrothal” rather 
than the “ marriage” of the soul. 

2. This clarity of vision may also be enjoyed in regard to 
the phenomenal world. The actual physical perceptions are 
strangely heightened, so that the self perceives an added 
significance and reality in all natural things : is often convinced 
that it knows at last “the secret of the world.” In Blake’s 
words “the doors of perception are cleansed ” so that “ every- 
thing appears to man as it zs, infinite.” ! 

Plainly, these two forms of perception represent that duai 
intuition of a Transcendent-Immanent Reality, that stretching 
of consciousness in two directions until it includes in its 
span both the World of Pure Being and the World of Becom- 
ing,2 which we found to be one of the distinguishing marks of 
the mystic type. 

3. Along with this two-fold extension of consciousness, the 
energy of the intuitional or transcendental self is enormously 
increased. The psychic upheavals of the Purgative Way have 
tended to make it central for life: to eliminate from the cha- 
racter all those elements which checked its activity. Now it 
seizes upon the ordinary channels of expression ; and frequently 
shows itself in such forms as () auditions, (6) dialogues between 
the surface consciousness and another intelligence which pur- 
ports to be divine, (c) visions, and sometimes (d@) in automatic - 
writings. This automatic activity of those growing but still 
largely subconscious powers which constitute the “ New Man,” 
increases steadily during the whole of the mystic life. 

Illumination, then, tends to appear mainly under one or all 


of these three forms. Often all are present, though, as a rule, 


one seems to dominate the rest. The character of each case 
will be conditioned by the self’s psychic make-up, its tempera- 
mental leaning towards “pure contemplation,” “lucid vision,” 
or automatic expression, emanation or immanence, the meta- 
physical, artistic, or intimate aspects of truth. The possible 
combinations between these various factors are as innumerable 


as the possible creations of Life itself. 


In Brother Lawrence’s “ Practice of the Presence of God,” 


™ “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” xxii. 
* Vide supra, pp. 42-50. 


290 -AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


in St. Bernard’s converse with the Word, in Richard Rolle’s 
“ state of song,” when “sweetest heavenly melody he took, with 
him dwelling in mind,” we may see beautiful expressions of the 
first form of illuminated consciousness. Jacob Boehme is 
rightly looked upon as a typical example of the second : which 
is also found in one of its most attractive forms in St. Francis of 
Assisi. Suso and St. Teresa, perhaps, may stand for the third, 
since in them the visionary and auditory phenomena were 
peculiarly well marked. The preliminary study of each cha- 
racteristic in order, will help us to disentangle the many threads 
which go to the psychical make-up of these great and complex 
mystic types. The rest of this chapter will, then, be given to 
the analysis of the two main forms of illuminated consciousness : 
the selfs perception of Reality in the eternal and temporal 
worlds. The important subject of voices and visions demands 
a division to itself. 


1. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE ABSOLUTE, OR “SENSE OF 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD” 


This consciousness, in its various forms, is perhaps the most 
constant of all the characteristics of Illumination : and it is this 
which makes it, for the mystic soul, a pleasure-state of the 
intensest kind. I do not mean by this that the subject passes 
months or years in a continuous ecstasy of communion with the 
Divine. Intermittent periods of spiritual fatigue or “aridity ”— 
the last vestiges of purgation—the oncoming gloom of the Dark 
Night—all these may be, and often are, experienced at intervals 
during the Illuminated Life ; as flashes of insight, indistinguish- 
able from illumination, constantly break the monotony of the 
Purgative Way. But a certain knowledge of this Personal Life 
omnipresent in the universe has been achieved: and can never 
be forgotten though it be withdrawn. The “spirit stretching 
towards God” declares that it has touched Him; and its normal 
condition henceforth is an acute and joyous consciousness of 
His Presence with “many privy touchings of sweet spiritual 
sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear 
it.”t Where he prefers less definite or more pantheistic 
language, the mystic’s perceptions may take the form of 


* Julian of Norwich, ‘‘ Revelations,” cap. xliiL. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 291 


“harmony with the Infinite”—the same divine music trans- 
posed to a lower key. 

This “sense of God” is nota metaphor. Innumerable decla- 
rations prove it to be a consciousness as sharp as that which other 
men have, or think they have, of colour, heat, or light. It isa 
well-known though usually transitory experience in the religious 
- life: like the homing irstinct of birds, a fact which can neither 
be denied nor explained. “ How that presence is felt, may better 
be known by experience than by any writing,” says Hilton, “ for 
it is the life and the love, the might and the light, the joy and 
the rest of a chosen soul. And therefore he that hath once 
truly felt it cannot forbear it without pain, neither can he choose 
but desire it, it is so good in itself and so comfortable. ... He 
cometh secretly sometimes when thou art least aware of Him, 
but thou shalt know Him full well ere He go; for He wonder- 
fully stirreth and mightily turneth thy heart into the beholding 
of His goodness, and then doth thy heart melt delectably as 
wax against the fire into softness of His love.”? 

Modern psychologists have laboured hard to establish the 
pathological character of this state of consciousness: to find a 
place for it in the hospitable domain of “ psychic hallucinations.” 2 
The mystics, however, who discriminate so much more delicately 
than their critics between true and false transcendental experi- 
ence, never feel any doubt about the validity of this “sense of 
the presence.” Even when their theology contradicts it, they 
refuse to be disturbed. 

Thus St. Teresa writes of her own experience, with her 
usual simplicity and directness, “In the beginning it happened 
to me that I was ignorant of one thing—I did not know that 
God was in all things: and when He seemed to me to be so 
near, | thought it impossible. Not to believe that He was 
present was not in my power; for it seemed to me, as it were, 
evident that I felt there His very presence. Some unlearned 
men used to say to me, that He was present only by His grace. 
1 could not belteve that, because, as I am saying, He seemed to 
me to be present Himself: so I was distressed. A most learned 
man, of the Order of the glorious Patriarch St. Dominic, 


* ** The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. xi. 
? See Delacroix, ‘‘ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,”” Appendix I. ‘‘ Hallucinations 
Psychiques, Sentiment de Présence.”’ 


292 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


delivered me from this doubt; for he told me that He was 
present, and how He communed with us: this was a great 
comfort to me.’ ! 

Again, “An interior peace, and the little strength which 
either pleasures or displeasures have to remove this presence 
(during the time it lasts) of the Three Persons, and that without 
power to doubt of it, continue in such a manner that I clearly 
seem to experience what St. John says, That He will dwell in 
the soul, and this not only by grace, but that He will also make 
her perceive this presence.2. St. Teresa’s strong “ immanental” 
bent comes out well in this passage. 

Such a sense of the divine presence goes side by side with 
the daily life and normal mental activities of its possessor ; 
who is not necessarily an ecstatic or an abstracted visionary, 
remote from the work of the world. It is true that the tran- 
scendental consciousness has now become, once for all, his centre 
of interest: that its perceptions and admonitions dominate and 
light up his daily life. The object of education, in the Platonic 
sense, has been achieved: his soul has “ wheeled round from the 
perishing world” to “the contemplation of the real world and 
the brightest part thereof.” 3 

In many temperaments of the unstable or artistic type, this 
intuitional consciousness of the Absolute becomes ungovern- 
able: it constantly breaks through, obtaining forcible possession 
of the mental field and expressing itself in the “psychic” 
phenomena of ecstasy and rapture. In others, less mobile, 
it wells up into an impassioned apprehension, a “ flame of love” 
in which the self seems to “meet God in the ground of the 
soul.” This is “gure contemplation”: that state of deep 
orison in which the subject seems to be “seeing, feeling and 


thinking all at once.” By this spontaneous exercise of all his ‘ 


powers under the dominion of love, the mystic attains that 
“Vision of the Heart” which, “ more interior, perhaps, than the 
visions of dream or ecstasy,” 4 stretches to the full those very 
faculties which it seems to be holding in suspense; as a top 
“sleeps” when it is spinning fast. Ego dormio et cor meum 


: oe: cap. xvili. § 20. 

‘* Letters of St. Teresa ” (1581), Dalton’s translation, No. VII. 
3 *€ Republic,” vii. 518. 
4 Récéjac, ‘‘ Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 151 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 293 


vigilat. This act of contemplation, this glad surrender to an 
overwhelming consciousness of the Presence of God, leaves no 
sharp image on the mind: only a knowledge that we have 
been lifted up, to a veritable gazing upon That which eye 
hath not seen. 

St. Bernard has left us in one of his sermons a simple, 
ingenuous and obviously personal account of such “privy 
touchings,” such convincing but elusive contacts of the soul with 
the Absolute. “Now bear with my foolishness for a little,” 
he says, “for I wish to tell you, as I have promised, how such 
events have taken place in me. It is, indeed, a matter of 
no importance. But I put myself forward only that I may be 
of service to you; and if you derive any benefit I am consoled 
for my egotism. If not, I shall but have displayed my foolish- 
ness. I confess, then, though I say it in my foolishness, that the 
Word has visited me, and even very often. But, though He 
has frequently entered into my soul, I have never at any time 
been sensible of the precise moment of His coming. I have felt 
that He was present, I remember that He has been with me; I 
have sometimes been able even to have a presentiment that He 
would come: but never to feel His coming nor His departure. 
For whence He came to enter my soul, or whither He went on 
quitting it, by what means He has made entrance or departure, 
I confess that I know not even to this day ; according to that 
which is said, Wesczs unde veniat aut quo vadat. Nor is this 
strange, because it is to Him that the psalmist has said in 
another place, Vestigza tua non cognoscentur. 

“It is not by the eyes that He enters, for He is without 
form or colour that they can discern; nor by the ears, for 
His coming is without sound; nor by the nostrils, for it is 
not with the air but with the mind that He is blended... . 
By what avenue then has He entered? Or perhaps the fact 
may be that He has not entered at all, nor indeed come at 
all from outside: for not one of these things belongs to out- 
side. Yet it has not come from within me, for it is good, 
and I know that in me dwelleth no good thing. I have 
ascended higher than myself; and lo! I have found the 
Word above me still. My curiosity has led me to descend 
below myself also, and yet I have found Him still ata 
lower depth. If I have looked without myself, I have found that 


294 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


He is beyond that which is outside of me; and if within, 
He was at an inner depth still. And thus have I learned 
the truth of the words I have read, lm zpso entm vivimus 
et movemur et sumus.” t 

Such a lifting up, such a condition of consciousness as that 
which St. Bernard is here trying to describe, seems to snatch the 
spirit for a moment into a state which it is hard to distinguish 
from that of true “union.” This is what the contemplatives 
call passive or infused contemplation, or sometimes the 
“orison of union”: a brief foretaste of the Unitive State, often 
enjoyed for short periods in the [lluminative Way, which 
reinforces their conviction that they have now truly attained 
the Absolute. It is but a foretaste, however, of that attain- 
ment: the precocious effort of a soul still in that stage of 
“Enlightening ”—the equivalent of Illumination,—which the 
“Theologia Germanica” declares to be “belonging to such as 
are growing.” 2 

This rather fine distinction between temporary union and 
the Unitive Life is perhaps best brought out in a fragment of 
dialogue between Soul and Self in Hugh of St. Victor’s mystical 
tract, “ De Arrha Animae.” 

The Soul says, “Tell me, what can be this thing of delight 
that merely by its memory touches and moves me with such 
sweetness and violence that I am drawn out of myself and 
carried away, I know not how? I am suddenly renewed: I am 
changed: I am plunged into an ineffable peace. My mind is 
full of gladness, all my past wretchedness and pain is forgot. 
My soul exults: my intellect is illuminated: my heart is afire: 
my desires have become kindly and gentle: I know not where 
I am, because my Love has embraced me. Also, because my 
Love has embraced me I seem to have become possessed of 
something, and I know not what it is; but I try to keep it, 
that I may never lose it. My soul strives in gladness that she 
may not be separated from That which she desires to hold 
fast for ever: as if she had found in it the goal of all her 
desires. She exults in a sovereign and ineffable manner, seek- 
ing nought, desiring nought, but to rest in this. Is ¢hzs, then, 
my Beloved? Tell me that I may know Him, and that if He 


* St. Bernard, ‘‘ Cantica Canticorum,” Sermon Ixxiv. 
* «© Theologia Germanica,” cap. xiv. 


j 
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 295 


come again I may entreat Him to leave me not, but to stay 
with me for ever.” 

Man says, “It is indeed thy Beloved who visits thee; but 
He comes in an invisible shape, He comes disguised, He comes 
incomprehensibly. He comes to touch thee, not to be seen of 
thee: to arouse thee, not to be comprehended of thee. He 
comes not to give Himself wholly, but to be tasted by thee: 
not to fulfill thy desire, but to lead upwards thy affection. He 
gives a foretaste of His delights, brings not the plenitude of a 
perfect satisfaction: and the earnest of thy betrothal consists 
chiefly in this, that He who shall afterwards give Himself to be 
seen and possessed by thee perpetually, now permits Himself to 
be sometimes tasted, that thou mayest learn how sweet He is. 
This shall console thee for His absence: and the savour of this 
gift shall keep thee from all despair.” * 

The real distinction between the Illuminative and the 
Unitive Life is that in Illumination the individuality of the 
subject—however profound his spiritual consciousness, however 
close his communion with the Infinite—remains separate and 
intact. His heightened apprehension of reality governs rather 
than obliterates the rest of his life: and may even increase his 
power of dealing adequately with the accidents of normal 
existence. Thus Brother Lawrence found that his acute sense 
of reality, his apprehension of the Presence of God, and the 
resulting detachment and consciousness of liberty in regard to 
mundane things, upheld and assisted him in the most unlikely - 
tasks ; as, for instance, when he was sent into Burgundy to buy 
wine for his convent, “ which was a very unwelcome task to him, 
because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, 
and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the 
casks. That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about, 
nor about the purchase of the wine. That he said to God, /¢ 
was Hts business he was about: and that he afterwards found it 
very well performed. ... So likewise in his business in the 
kitchen, to which he had naturally a great aversion.” 2 

The mind, concentrated upon a higher object of interest, is 
undistracted by its own likes and dislikes; and performs 
efficiently the work that is given it to do. Where it does not 


* Hugh of St. Victor, ‘‘De Arrha Animae”’ (Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. clxxvi.). 
2 ¢¢The Practice of the Presence of God,’’ Second Conversation. 


296 ‘AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


do so, then the normal make-up of the subject, rather than its 
mystical proclivities, must be blamed. St. Catherine of Genoa 
found in this divine companionship the power which made her 
hospital a success. St. Teresa was an admirable housewife, and 
declared that she found her God very easily amongst the pots 
and pans.t Appearances notwithstanding, Mary would prob- 
ably have been a better cook than Martha, had circumstances 
forced on her this form of activity. 

In persons of feeble or diffuse intelligence, however, this 
deep absorption in the sense of Divine Reality may easily 
degenerate into mono-ideism. Then the “black side” of Illu- 
mination, a selfish preoccupation with transcendental joys, the 
“spiritual gluttony ” condemned by St. John of the Cross, comes 
out. “I made many mistakes,” says Madame Guyon patheti- 
cally, “through allowing myself to be too much taken up by 
my interior joys. ... I used to sit in a corner and work, but 
I could hardly do anything, because the strength of this attrac- 
tion made me let the work fall out of my hands. I spent hours 
in this way without being able to open my eyes or to know 
what was happening to me: so simply, so peacefully, so gently 
that sometimes I said to myself, ‘Can heaven itself be more 
peaceful than I?’” 2 

Here we see Madame Guyon basking like a pious tabby cat 
in the beams of the Uncreated Light, and already leaning to 
the extravagances of Quietism with its dangerous “double 
character of passivity and beatitude.” The heroic aspect of the 
mystic vocation is wholly in abeyance. The “triumphing 
spiritual life,’ which her peculiar psychic make-up permitted 
her to receive, has been treated as a source of personal and 
placid satisfactions, not as a well-spring whence new vitality 
might be drawn for great and self-giving activities. 

It has been claimed by the early biographers of St. Catherine 
of Genoa that she passed in the crisis of her conversion directly 
through the Purgative to the Unitive Life ; and never exhibited 
the characteristics of the Illuminative Way. This has been 
effectually disproved by the Baron von Hiigel,3 though he too 
is inclined in her case to reject the usual sequence of the mystic 


* G. Cunninghame Graham, ‘‘ Santa Teresa,’ vol. i. p. 299. 
® Vie, pt. i. cap. xvii. 
3 “* Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. i. p. 105. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 297 


states. Yet the description of Catherine’s condition after her 
four great penitential years were ended, as given in cap. vi. of the 
“Vita e Dottrina,” is an almost perfect picture of healthy illu- 
mination of the inward or “immanent” type; and may fruitfully 
be compared with the passage which I have quoted from 
Madame Guyon’s life. 

No doubt there were hours in which St. Catherine’s experi- 
ence, as it were, ran ahead; and she felt herself not merely lit 
up by the Indwelling Light, but temporally merged in it. 
These moments are responsible for such passages as the: beau- 
tiful fragment in cap. v., which does, when taken alone, seem to 
describe the true unitive state. “Sometimes,” she said, “I do 
not see or feel myself to have either soul, body, heart, will or 
taste, or any other thing except Pure Love.” Her normal 
condition of consciousness, however, was clearly not yet that 
which Julian of Norwich calls being “oned with bliss”; but 
rather an intense and continuous communion with an objective 
Reality which she still felt to be distinct from herself. “After 
the aforesaid four years,” says the next chapter of the “ Vita,” 
“there was given unto her a purified mind, free, and filled with 
God: insomuch that no other thing could enter into it. Thus, 
when she heard sermons or Mass, so much was she absorbed in 
her interior feelings, that she neither heard nor saw that which 
was said or done without: but within, in the sweet divine light, 
she saw and heard other things—being wholly absorbed by 
their interior light: and it was not in her power to act other- 
wise.” Catherine, then, is still a spectator of the Absolute, 
does not feel herself to be ove with it. “And it is a marvellous 
thing that with so great an interior recollection, the Lord never 
permitted her to go beyond control. But when she was needed, 
she always came to herself: so that she was able to reply to 
that which was asked of her: and the Lord so guided her, that 
none could complain of her. And she had her mind so filled 
by Love Divine, that conversation became hard to her: and by 
this continuous taste and sense of God, several times she was so 
greatly transported, that she was forced to hide herself, that she 
‘might not be seen.” It is clear, however, that Catherine herself 
was aware of the transitory and imperfect nature of this intensely 
joyous state. Her growing transcendental self, unsatisfied with 


* Vita e Dottrina, Joc. ctt. 


298 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


the sunshine of the Illuminative Way, the enjoyment of the 
riches of God, already aspired to union with the Divine. With 
her, as with all truly heroic souls, it was love for love, not love 
for joy. “She cried to God because He gave her so many con- 
solations, ‘Mon voglio quello che esce da te, ma sol voglio te, O 
dolce Amore !’”* 

“ Non voglio quello che esce da te.’ When the crescent soul 
has come to this, the Illuminative Way is nearly at an end. It 
has seen the goal, “that Country which is no mere vision, but 
a home,” 2 and is set upon the forward march. So Gertrude 
More: “No knowledge which we can here have of thee can 
satisfy my soul seeking and longing without ceasing after thee. 
... Alas, my Lord God, what is al thou canst give to a loving 
soul which sigheth and panteth after thee alone, and esteemeth 
al things as dung that she may gain thee? What is al I say, 
whilst thou givest not thyself, who art that one thing which is 
only necessary and which alone can satisfy our souls? Was it 
any comfort to St. Mary Magdalen, when she sought thee, to 
find two angels which presented themselves instead of thee? 
verily I cannot think it was any joy unto her. For that soul 
that hath set her whole love and desire on thee can never find | 
any true satisfaction but only in thee.” 3 

What is the nature of this mysterious mystic illumination? 
Apart from the message it transmits, what is the form which 
it most usually assumes in the consciousness of the self? The 
illuminatives, one and all, seem to assure us that its apparently | 
symbolic name is a realistic one ; that it appears to them as a | 
kind of radiance, a flooding of the personality with new light. 
A new sun rises above the horizon and transfigures their twilit | 
world. Over and over again they return to light-imagery in | 
this connection. Frequently, as in the case of their first con- | 
version, they report an actual and overpowering consciousness | 





x “J desire not that which comes forth from Thee; but’only I desire Thee, O | 
sweetest Love!” (Vita e Dottrina, cap. vi.). 

2 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. xx. Compare St. Teresa : ‘* Rapture is a great help to | 
recognize our true home and to sce that we are pilgrims here; it is a great thing to , 
see what is going on there, and to know where we have to live; for if a person has 
to goand settle in another country, it isa great help to him in undergoing the fatigues 
of his journey that he has discovered it to be a country where he may live in the most | 
perfect peace” (Vida, cap. xxxvili., § 8). 

3 ** Spiritual Exercises,” pp. 26 and 174. 


z 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 299 


of radiant light, ineffable in its splendour, as an accompani- 
ment of their inward adjustment. 


‘* Sopr’ ogne lengua amore 
bonta senza figura 
lume fuor di mesura 
resplende nel mio core,’’ * 


sang Jacopone da Todi. “Light rare, untellable!” said 
Whitman. “The flowing light of the Godhead,” said Mech- 
thild of Magdeburg, trying to describe what it was that made 
the difference between her universe and that of normal men. 
“ Tux vivens dicit,’ said St. Hildegarde of her revelations, which 
she described as appearing in a special light, more brilliant than 
the brightness round the sun.2_ It is an “infused brightness,” 
says St. Teresa, “a light which knows no night; but rather, 
as it is always light, nothing ever disturbs it.” 3 


‘*De subito parve giorno a giorno 
essere aggiunto !” 


exclaims Dante, initiated into the atmosphere of heaven; 
“Lume e lasst.” is his constant declaration : 


** Cid ch’ io dico e un semplice lume,” 


his last word, in the effort to describe the soul’s apprehension of 
the Being of God.4 

It really seems as though the mystics’ attainment of new 
levels of consciousness did bring with it the power of perceiving 
a splendour always there, but beyond the narrow range of our 
poor sight; to which it is only a “luminous darkness” at the 
best. “In Eternal Nature, or the kingdom of Heaven,” said 
Law, “ materiality stands in life and light.”5 The cumulative 
testimony on this point is such as would be held to prove, in 
any other department of knowledge, that there is indeed an 


* Love above all language, goodness unimagined, light without measure 
shines in my heart” (Jacopone da Todi. Lauda xci.). 

? Pitra, ‘‘ Analecta S. Hildegardis opera,” p. 332. 

3 St. Teresa, Vida, cap. xxviii. §§ 7, 8. 

4 Par. i. 61, xxx. 100, xxxiii. 90. 

5 **An Appeal to All who Doubt.” I give the whole passage below, p. 316. 


300 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


actual light, rare, untellable, “lighting the very light” and 
awaiting the recognition of men.t 

Consider the accent of realism with which St. Augustine 
speaks in the most celebrated passage of the “Confessions”: 
where we seem to see aborn psychologist desperately struggling 
by means of negations to describe an intensely positive state. “I 
entered into the secret closet of my soul, led by Thee; and 
this I could do because Thou wast my helper. I entered, and 
beheld with the mysterious eye of my soul the Light that never 
changes, above the eye of my soul, above my intelligence. It 
was not the common light which all flesh can see, nor was it 
greater yet of the same kind, as if the light of day were to 
grow brighter and brighter and flood all space. It was not like 
this, but different: altogether different from all such things. 
Nor was it above my intelligence in the same way as oil is 
above water, or heaven above earth, but it was higher because 
it made me, and I was lower because made by it. He who 
knoweth the truth knoweth that Light: and who knoweth it, 
knoweth eternity. Love knoweth it.” 2 

Here, as in the case of St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Genoa, 
and Jacopone da Todi, we have a characteristically “imma- 
nental” description of the illuminated state. The self, by the 
process which mystics call “introversion,” the deliberate turn- 
ing inwards of its attention, its conative powers, discerns Reality 
within the heart: “the rippling tide of love which flows secretly 
from God into the soul and draws it mightily back into its 
source.” 3 But the opposite or transcendental tendency—the 
splendid Cosmic vision of Infinity exterior to the subject— 
the expansive, outgoing movement towards a Divine Light, 


‘*Che visible face 
lo Creatore a quella creatura 
che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace,” 4 


* It is, of course, arguable that the whole of this light-imagery is ultimately 
derived from the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: as the imagery of the Spiritual 
Marriage is supposed to be derived from the Song of Solomon. But it must ‘be 
remembered that mystics are essentially realists, always seeking for language 
adequate to their vision of truth: hence the fact that they have adopted jthis imagery 
is a guarantee that it represents something which they know and are struggling to 
describe. 

2 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap.x. 3 Mechthild of Magdeburg, of. cé¢., pt. vii. 45. 

4 Par. xxx. 100, ‘‘ Which makes visible the Creator to that creature who 
only in beholding Him finds its peace.” 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 301 


the strange, formless absorption in the Divine Dark to which 
the soul is destined to ascend—these modes of perception are 
equally characteristic of the Illuminative Way. As in conver- 
sion, so here, Reality may be apprehended in either transcen- 
dent or immanent, positive or negative terms. Itis both near and 
far ; and for some selves that which is far is easiest to find. To 
a certain type of mind, the veritable practice of the Presence of 
God is not the intimate and adorable companionship of the 
Inward Light, but the awestruck contemplation of the Absolute, 
the “naked Godhead,” source and origin of all that Is. It is an 
ascent to the supernal plane of perception where, “without 
veils, in themselves and in their changelessness,.the mysteries 
of theology appear in the midst of the luminous darkness of a 
silence which is full of profound teaching: a marvellous dark- 
ness which shines with rays of splendour, and which, invisible 
and intangible, inundates with its fires the dazzled and sancti- 
fied soul,” 

With such an experience of eternity, such a vision of the 
Triune all-including Absolute which “binds the Universe 
with love,” Dante ends his “Divine Comedy”: and the 
mystic joy with which its memory fills him is his guarantee 
that he has really seen the Inviolate Rose, the Flaming 
Heart of things. 


“OQ abbondante grazia, ond’ io presunsi 
ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna, 
tanto che la veduta vi consunsi ! 

Nel suo profondo vidi che s’ interna, 
legato con amore in un volume, 
cio che per l’universo si squaderna ; 
Sustanzia ed accidenti, e lor costume, 
quasi conflati insieme per tal modo, 
che cid ch’ io dico é¢ un semplice lume. 
La forma universal di questo nodo 
credo ch’ io vidi, perché piu di largo, 
dicendo questo, mi sento ch’ io godo. 


O, quanto é corto il dire, e come fioco 
al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’ io vidi, 
é tanto, che non basta a dicer poco. 


* Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘‘ De Mystica Theologia,” i. 1. 


302 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


O luce eterna, che sola in te sidi, 
sola t’ intendi, e, da te intelletta 
ed intendente te, ami ed arridi-!” * 


In Dante, the transcendent and impersonal aspect of illumi- 
nation is seen in its most exalted form. It seems at first sight 
almost impossible to find room within the same system for this 
expansive vision of the Undifferentiated Light and such inti- 
mate and personal apprehensions of Deity as Lady Julian’s 
conversations with her “courteous and dearworthy, Lord,” 
St. Catherine’s companionship with Love Divine. Yet all these 
are really reports of the same psychological state: describe the 
attainment of the same grade of reality. 

In a wonderful passage, unique in the literature of mys- 
ticism, Angela of Foligno has reported the lucid vision in which 
she perceived this truth: the twofold apprehension of an 
Absolute at once humble and omnipotent, personal and tran- 
scendent—the unimaginable synthesis of “ unspeakable power ” 
and “deep humility.” 

“The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the 
plenitude of God, whereby I did comprehend the whole world, 
both here and beyond the sea, and the Abyss and all things 
else; and therein did I behold naught save the divine power in 
a manner assuredly indescribable, so that through excess of 
marvelling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying ‘ This whole 
world is full of God!’ Wherefore did I now comprehend that 
the world is but a small thing; I saw, moreover, that the 
power of God was above ‘all things, and that the whole world 
was filled with it. Then He said unto me: ‘I have shown thee 
something of My Power,’ the which I did so well understand, 


* Par. xxxili. 82, 121 :— 

‘*O grace abounding ! wherein I presumed to fix my gaze on the eternal light, 
so long that I consumed my sight thereon ! 

In its depths I saw ingathered the scattered leaves of the universe, bound into one 
book by love. 

Substance and accidents, and their relations; as if fused together in such a 
manner that what I tell of is a simple light. 

And I believe that I saw the universal form of this complexity ; because, as I 
say this, I feel that I rejoice more deeply... . 

Oh, but how scant the speech and how faint to my concept ! and that to what I 
saw is such, that it suffices not to call it ‘little.’ 

O Light Eternal, Who only in Thyself abidest, only Thyself dost comprehend, 
and, of Thysel fcomprehended and Thyself comprehending, dost love and smile !” 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 303 


that it enabled me better to understand all other things. He 
said also, ‘I have made thee to see something of My Power; 
behold now, and see My humility.’ Then was I given so deep 
an insight into the humility of God towards man and all other 
things, that when my soul remembered His unspeakable power 
and comprehended His deep humility, it marvelled greatly and 
did esteem itself to be nothing at all.” 2 

It must never be forgotten that all apparently one-sided 
descriptions of illumination—more, all experiences of it—are 
governed by temperament. ‘That Light whose smile kindles 
the Universe” is ever the same; but the self through whom 
it passes, and by whom we must receive its report, has 
already submitted to the mouiding influences of environment 
and heredity, Church and State. The very language of which 
that self avails itself in its struggle for expression, links 
it with half a hundred philosophies and creeds. The response 
which it makes to Divine Love will be the same in type as the 
response which its nature would make to earthly love: but 
raised to the mth degree. We, receiving the revelation, 
receive with it all those elements which the subject has contri- 
buted in spite of itself. Hence the apprehension of Divine 
Reality may take almost any form, from the metaphysical 
ecstasies which we find in Dionysius, and to aless degree in St. 
Augustine, to the simple, almost “common-sense” state- 
ments of Brother Lawrence, the lovely intimacies of Julian 
or Mechthild. 

Sometimes—so rich and varied does the nature of the great 
mystic tend to be-—the exalted and impersonal language of the 
Dionysian theology goes, with no sense of incongruity, side by side 
with homely parallels drawn from the most sweet and common 
incidents of daily life. Suso, in whom illumination and purga- 
tion existed side by side for sixteen years, alternately obtaining 
possession of the mental field, and whose oscillations between 
the harshest mortification and the most ecstatic pleasure-states 
were exceptionally violent and swift, is a characteristic instance 
of such an attitudeof mind. His illumination was largely of the 
intimate and immanental type; but it was not without touches of 
mystical transcendence, which break out with sudden splendour 


* B. Angelae de Fulginio, ‘‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,’’ cap. xxii. 
English translation, p. 172). 


304 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


side by side with those tender and charming passages in which 
the Servitor of the Eternal Wisdom tries to tell his love. 

Thus, he describes in one of the earlier chapters of his 
life how “whilst he was thinking, according to his custom, of 
the most lovable Wisdom, he questioned himself, and inter- 
rogated his heart which sought persistently for love, saying, 
~ €O my heart, whence comes this love and grace, whence comes 
this gentleness and beauty, this joy and sweetness of the 
heart? Does not all this flow forth from the Godhead as from 
its origin? Come! let my heart, my senses and my soul 
immerse themselves in the deep Abyss whence come these 
adorable things. What shall keep me back? To-day I will 
embrace you, even as my burning heart desires to do.’ And at 
this moment there was within his heart as it were an emanation 
of all good ; all that is beautiful, aii that is lovable and desirable 
was there spiritually present, and this in a manner which 
cannot be expressed. Whence came the habit that every time 
he heard God’s praises sung or said, he recollected himself in the 
depths of his heart and soul, and thought on that Beloved 
Object, whence comes all love. It is impossible to tell how often, 
with eyes filled with tears, and open heart, he has embraced his 
sweet Friend, and pressed Him to a heart overflowing with love. 
He was like a baby which a mother holds upright on her knees, 
supporting it with her hands beneath its arms. The baby, by 
the movements of its little head, and all its little body, tries 
to get closer and closer to its dear mother, and shows by its 
little laughing gestures the gladness in its heart. Thus did the 
heart of the Servitor ever seek the sweet neighbourhood of the 
Divine Wisdom, and thus he was as it were altogether filled with 
~ delight.” 


2. THE ILLUMINATED VISION OF THE WORLD 


Very clearly connected with the sense of “the Presence 
of God,” or power of perceiving the Absolute, is the comple- 
mentary mark of the illuminated consciousness; the vision of “a 
new heaven and a new earth,” or an added significance and 
reality in the phenomenal world. Such words as those of Julian, 
“God is all thing that is good as to my sight, and the goodness 





* Suso, Leben, cap. iv. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF - 305 


that all thing hath, it is He,” seem to provide the link 
between the two. Here again we have to distinguish care- 
fully between vaguely poetic language—“ the light that never 
was,” “every common bush afire with God”—and descriptions 
which relate to a concrete and definite psychological experience. 

This experience, at its best, balances and completes the 
experience of the Presence of God at its best. That is to say, 
its “note” is sacramental, not ascetic. It entails the ex- 
pansion rather than the concentration of consciousness, the 
discovery of the Perfect One ablaze in the Many, not the for- 
saking of the Many in order to find the One. Its characteristic 
expression is— 


*‘The World is charged with the grandeur of God; 
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,” 


not “turn thy thoughts into thy own soul, where He is hid.” It - 
takes, as a rule, the form of an enormously enhanced mental 
lucidity—a sharpening of the senses, as it were—whereby an 
ineffable radiance, a beauty and a reality never before suspected, 
are perceived by a sort of clairvoyance shining in the meanest 
things. 

“From the moment in which the soul has received the 
impression of Deity in infused orison,” says Malaval, “she sees 
Him everywhere, by one of love’s secrets which is only 
known of those who have experienced it. The simple vision 
of pure love, which is marvellously penetrating, does not stop at . 
the outer husk of creation: it penetrates to the divinity which 
is hidden within.” 2 

Thus Browning makes David declare— 


“T'but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less, 
In the kind I imagined full-fronts me, and God is seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.’’3 


Blake’s “To see a world in a grain of sand,’ Tennyson’s 
‘Flower in the crannied wall,” Vaughan’s “Each bush and 


* “ Revelations,” cap. viii. 
* Malaval, “ De l’Oraison Ordinaire”’ (‘‘La Pratique de la Vraye Théologie 
Aystique,” vol. i. p. 342). 
3 ** Saul,” xvii. 
x pete \ 


306 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


oak doth know I AM,” and the like, are exact though over- 
quoted reports of “things seen” in this state of consciousness, 
this “simple vision of pure love”: the value of which is summed 
up in Eckhart’s profound saying, “ The meanest thing that one 
knows in God,—for instance, if one could understand a flower 
as it has its Being in God—this would be a higher thing 
than the whole world!” Many mystical poets of the type of 
- Wordsworth and Walt Whitman possessed to a considerable 
extent this form of illumination. It is this which Bucke, the 
American psychologist, has analysed in great detail under the 
name of “Cosmic Consciousness.”2 It is seen at its fullest 
development in such cases as those of Fox, Boehme, and 
Blake. 

We will first take the experience of Jacob Boehme, both 
because in his case we have a first-hand description which is 
particularly detailed and complete, and because he is one of 
the best recorded all-round examples of mystical illumination ; 
exhibiting, along with an acute consciousness of divine com- 
panionship, all those phenomena of visual lucidity, automatism, 
and enhanced intellectual powers which properly belong to it, 
but are seldom developed simultaneously in the same individual. 

In Boehme’s life, as described in the Introduction to the 
English translation of his Collected Works,3 there were three 
distinct onsets of illumination; all of the pantheistic and 
external type. In the first, which seems to have happened 
whilst he was very young, it is said that “he was surrounded by 
a divine Light for seven days, and stood in the highest con- 
templation and Kingdom of Joy.” This, perhaps, we may 
reasonably identify with mystical awakening of the kind 
experienced by Suso. About the year 1600 occurred the 
second illumination, initiated by a trance-like state of conscious- 
ness, the result of gazing at a polished disc. To this I have 
already referred in an earlier chapter.4 This brought with it 
that peculiar and lucid vision of the inner reality of the 
phenomenal world in which, as he himself says, “ he looked into 


™ Meister Eckhart (‘‘ Mystische Schriften,” p. 137). 

2 Vide supra, Pt. II. Cap. II., the cases of Richard Jefferies, Brother Lawrence, 
and others. 

3 The Works of Jacob Boehme, 4 vols., 1764, vol. i. pp. xii., &e. 

4 Supra, p. 69. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 307 


the deepest foundations of things.” “He believed that it was 
only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he 
went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he 
gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass, 
and that actual Nature harmonized with what he had inwardly 
seen.”! Of this same experience and the clairvoyance which 
accompanied it, another biographer says, “ Going abroad in the 
fields to a green before Neys Gate, at Gorlitz, he there sat down, 
and, viewing the herbs and grass of the field in his inward light, 
he saw into their essences, use and properties, which were dis- 
covered to him by their lineaments, figures and signatures. ... 
In the unfolding of these mysteries before his understanding, he 
had a great measure of joy, yet returned home and took care of 
his family and lived in great peace and silence, scarce intimating 
to any these wonderful things that had befallen him.” 2 

So far as we can tell from his own scattered statements, 
Boehme must have lived from this time onwards in fairly con- 
stant and growing consciousness of the transcendental world : 
though there is evidence that he, like all other mystics, knew 
seasons of darkness, “many a shrewd Repulse,” and times of 
struggle with that “ powerful contrarium ” the lower conscious- 
ness. In 1610—perhaps as the result of such intermittent 
struggles—the vivid illumination of ten years before was repeated 
in an enhanced form: and it was in consequence of this, and in 
order that there might be some record of the mysteries upon 
which he had gazed, that he wrote his first and most difficult 
book, the “ Aurora,” or “Morning Redness.” The passage in 
which the “inspired shoemaker ” has tried hard to tell us what 
his vision of Reality was like, to communicate something of the 
grave and enthusiastic travail of his being, the indicible know- 
ledge of things to which he attained, is one of those which 
arouse in all who have even the rudiments of mystical percep- 
tion the sorrow and excitement of exiles who suddenly hear 
the accents of home. It is a “musical” passage: addresses 
itself to the whole being, not merely to the intellect. In its 
movement, and in the quality of its emotion, it is like some 
romance by Brahms. Those who will listen and be receptive 


* Martensen, ‘‘ Jacob Boehme,’’ p. 7. 
2 “* Life of Jacob Boehme,” pp. xiii. and xiv. in vol. i. of his Collected Works, 
English translation. 


.@ 


308 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


will find themselves repaid by a strange sense of extended life, 
an exhilarating consciousness of truth. Here, if ever, is a man 
who is straining every nerve to “speak as he saw”: and it is 
plain that he saw much—as much, perhaps, as Dante, though he 
lacked the poetic genius which was needed to give his vision 
an intelligible form. The very strangeness of the phrasing, the 
unexpected harmonies and dissonances which worry polite and 
well-regulated minds, are earnests of the Spirit of Life crying 


out for expression from within. Boehme, like Blake, seems 


“drunk with intellectual vision”—‘“a God-intoxicated man.” 
“Tn this my earnest and Christian Seeking and Desire,” he 
says, “(wherein I suffered many a shrewd Repulse, but at last 
resolved rather to put myself in Hazard, than give over and 
leave off) the Gate was opened to me, that in one Quarter of 
an Hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years 
together at an University, at which I exceedingly admired, and 
thereupon turned my Praise to God for it. For I sawand knew 
the Being of all Beings, the Byss and the Abyss, and the 
Eternal Generation of the Holy Trinzty, the Descent and Original 
of the World, and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom : 
knew and saw in myself all the three Worlds, namely, The 
Divine, angelical and paradisical; and the dark World, the 
Original of the Nature to the Fire ; and then, thirdly, the er- 
ternal and visible World, being a Procreation or external Birth 
from both the internal and spiritual Worlds. And I saw and 
knew the whole working Essence in the Evil and the Good, 
and the Original and Existence of each of them ; and likewise 
how the fruitful bearing Womb of Eternity brought forth. 
Yet however I must begin to labour in these great mysteries, 
as a Child that goes to School. I saw it as in a great Deep in 
the Internal. For I had a thorough view of the Universe, 
as in a Chaos, wherein all things are couched and wrapped up, 
but it was impossible for me to explain the same. Yet it 
opened itself to me, from Time to Time, as in a Young Plant; 
though the same was with me for the space of twelve years, 
and as it was as it were breeding and I found a powerful 
Instigation within me, before I could bring it forth into 
external Form of Writing: and whatever I could apprehend 
with the external Principle of my mind, that I wrote down.”! 


* Op. cit., Pp. XV. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 309 


Close to this lucid vision of the reality of things—this 
sudden glimpse of the phenomenal in the light of the intel- 
ligible world—is George Fox’s experience at the age of twenty- 
four, as recorded in his Journal.t Here, as in Boehme’s case, 
it is clear that a previous and regrettable acquaintance with the 
“doctrine of signatures” has to some extent determined the 
language and symbols under which he describes his intuitive 
vision of actuality as it exists in the Divine Mind. 

“ Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword 
into the Paradise of God. All things were new: and all the 
creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what 
words can utter. ... The creation was opened to me; and it 
was showed me how all things had their names given them, 
according to their nature and virtue. And I was atastand in 
my mind whether I should practise physic for the good of 
mankind, seeing the nature and virtue of the creatures were 
so opened to me by the Lord. ... Great things did the Lord 
lead me unto, and wonderful depths were opened unto me, 
beyond what can by words be declared; but as people come 
into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image 
and power of the Almighty, they may receive the word of 
wisdom that opens all things, and come to know the hidden 
unity in the Eternal Being.” 

“To know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being ”—know 
it with an invulnerable certainty, in the all-embracing act of 
consciousness with which we are aware of the personality of 
those we truly love—is to live at its fullest the Illuminated Life, 
enjoying “all creatures in God and God in all creatures.” 

Lucidity of this sort seems to be an enormously enhanced . 
form of the true poetic consciousness of “otherness” in natural 
things—the sense of a unity in separateness, a mighty and actual 
Life beyond that which eye can see, a glorious reality shining 
through the phenomenal veil—frequent in those temperaments 
which are at one with life ; often—as in Blake—a permanent 
accompaniment of the Illuminative State, and a constant though 
transitory feature in conversions of all kinds. The self becomes 
conscious, as it were, of that. World of Becoming, that great 
and many-coloured river of life, in which the little individual 
life is immersed. Alike in howling gale and singing cricket it 


* Vol. i. cap. ii. 


310° AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


hears the crying aloud of that “Word which is through all 
things everlastingly.” It participates, actively and open-eyed, 
in the mighty journey of the Son towards the Father’s heart: 
and seeing with purged sight all things and creatures as they 
are in that transcendent order, detects in them too that striving 
of Creation to return to its centre which is the secret of the 
Universe. 

A harmony is thus set up between the mystic and Life in all 
its forms. Undistracted by appearance, he sees, feels, and knows 
it in one piercing act of loving comprehension, “And the 
bodily sight stinted,” says Julian, but the spiritual sight dwelled 
in mine understanding, and I abode with reverent dread joying 
in that I saw.” The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and 
sees—perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss 
—an undistorted and more veritable world. All things are 
perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect 
of beauty: for beauty is simply Reality seen with the eyes of 
love. As in the case of another and more beatific Vision, 
essere in carita é gut necesse.2, For sucha reverent and joyous 
sight the meanest accidents of life are radiant. The London 
streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look: like 
coloured archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls. 

Often when we blame our artists for painting ugly things, 
they are but striving to show us a beauty to which we are 
blind. They have gone on ahead of us, and attained that state 
of “fourfold vision” to which Blake laid claim; in which the 
visionary sees the whole visible universe transfigured, because 
he has “ put off the rotten rags of sense and memory,” and 
“put on Imagination uncorrupt.”3 In this state of lucidity 


symbol and reality, Nature and Imagination, are seen to be - 


One: and in it are produced all the more sublime works of 
art, since these owe their greatness to the impact of Reality 
upon the artistic mind. “I know,” says Blake again, “that 
this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every- 
thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. 
To the eye of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the 
sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful 
proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which 


* “ Revelations,” cap. viii. © Par, iii..77: 
+“ Letters of William Blake,” p. rrr, 


ae 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 311 


moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a 
green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all 
ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my 
proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the 
eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. 
As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its 
powers. You certainly mistake, when you say that the visions 
of fancy are not to be found in this world. To me this world 
is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel 
flattered when I am told so.”2 

If the Mystic Way be considered as a process of tran- 
scendence: a movement of the self towards free and conscious 
participation in the Absolute Life, and a progressive appro- 
priation of that life by means of the contact which exists in 
the deeps of man’s being—the ground or spark of the soul— 
between the subject and the transcendental world: then this 
illuminated apprehension of things, this cleansing of the doors 
of perception, is surely what we might expect to occur as man 
moves towards higher centres of consciousness. His surface 
intelligence, purified from the domination of the senses, is 
invaded more and more by the transcendent personality, the 
“ New Man” who is by nature a denizen of the independent 
spiritual world, and whose destiny, in mystical language, is a 
“return to his Origin.” Hence an inflow of new vitality, extended 
powers of vision, an enormous exaltation of his intuitive powers. 

In such moments of clear sight and enhanced perception as 
that which Blake and Boehme describe, the mystic and the 
artist do really see sub specie aeternitatts the Four-fold River 
of Life—that World of Becoming in which, as Erigena says, 
“Every visible and invisible creature is a theophany or 
appearance of God ”—as all might see it, if prejudice, selfhood, 
or other illusion did not distort their sight. From this loving 
vision there comes very often that beautiful sympathy with, 
that abnormal power over, all living natural things, which crops 
up over and over again in the lives of the mystical saints; to 
amaze the sluggish minds of common men, barred by ‘the 
torrent of Use and Wont’? from all communion alike with 
their natural and supernatural origin. 

Yet is not so very amazing that St. Francis of Assisi, feeling 


* OP. cit, p. 62, ? Aug. Conf., bk. i. cap. xvi. 


312 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


and knowing — not merely “believing” — that every living 
creature was veritably and actually a “theophany or appearance 
of God,” should have been acutely conscious that he shared with 
these brothers and sisters of his the great and lovely life of the 
All. Nor, this being so, can we justly regard him as eccentric 
because he acted in accordance with his convictions, preached to 
his little sisters the birds,t availed himself of the kindly offices 
of the falcon,? enjoyed the friendship of the pheasant,3 soothed * 
the captured turtledoves, his “simple-minded sisters, innocent 
and chaste,” 4 or persuaded his Brother Wolf to a better life.s 

The true mystic, so often taunted with “a denial of the 
world,” does but deny the narrow and artificial world of self: 
and finds in exchange the secrets of that mighty universe which 
he shares with Nature and with God. Strange contacts, un- 
known to those who only lead the life of sense, are set up 
between his being and the being of all other things. In that 
remaking of his consciousness which follows upon the “ mystical 
awakening,” the deep and primal life which he shares with all 
creation has been roused from its sleep. Hence the barrier 
between human and non-human life, which makes man a 
stranger on earth as well as in heaven, is done away. Life 
now whispers to his life: all things are his intimates, and 
respond to his fraternal sympathy. | 

Thus it seems quite a simple and natural thing to the Little 
Poor Man of Assisi, whose friend the pheasant preferred his cell 
to “the haunts more natural to its state,” that he should be 
ambassador from the terrified folk of Gubbio to his formidable 
brother the Wolf. The result of the interview, reduced to 
ordinary language, could be paralleled in the experience of 
many persons who have possessed this strange and incom- 
municable power over animal life. 

“QO wondrous thing! whenas St. Francis had made the sign 
of the Cross, right so the terrible wolf shut his jaws and stayed 
his running: and when he was bid, came gently as a lamb and 
laid him down at the feet of St. Francis... . And St. Francis 
stretching forth his hand to take pledge of his troth, the wolf 


t “ Fioretti,” cap. xiv. 

2 Jbid., ‘‘ Delle Istimate,” 2, and Thomas of Celano, Vita Secunda, cap. exxvii. 
3 Thomas of Celano, of. c#t., cap. cxxix. 

4 ‘Wioretti,” cap. xxii. 5 lbtd., cap. xxi. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 313 


lifted up his right paw before him and laid it gently on the 
hand of St. Francis, giving thereby such sign of good faith as he 
was able. Then quoth St. Francis, ‘Brother Wolf, I bid thee 
in the name of Jesu Christ come now with me, nothing doubting, 
and let us go stablish this peace in God’s name. And the 
wolf obedient set forth with him, in fashion as a gentle lamb; 
whereat the townsfolk made mighty marvel, beholding. ... 
And thereafter this same wolf lived two years in Agobio; and 
went like a tame beast in and out the houses from door to door, 
without doing hurt to any, or any doing hurt to him, and was 
courteously nourished by the people; and as he passed thus 
wise through the country and the houses, never did any dog 
bark behind him. At length after a two years space, brother 
wolf died of old age: whereat the townsfolk sorely grieved, sith 
marking him pass so gently through the city, they minded them 
the better of the virtue and the sanctity of St. Francis,” * 

In another mystic, less familiar than St. Francis to English 
readers—Rose of Lima, the Peruvian saint—this deep sympathy 
with natural things assumed a particularly lovely form. To 
St. Rose the whole world was a holy fairyland, in which it seemed 
to her that every living thing turned its face towards Eternity 
and joined in her adoration of God. It is said in her biography 
that “when at sunrise, she passed through the garden to ,o 
to her retreat, she called upon nature to praise with her the 
Author of all things. Then the trees were seen to bow as she 
passed by, and clasp their leaves together, making a harmonious 
sound. The flowers swayed upon their stalks, and opened their 
blossoms: that they might scent the air; thus according to their 
manner praising God. At the same time the birds began to 
sing, and came and perched upon the hands and shoulders of 
Rose. The insects greeted her with a joyous murmur and all 
which had life and movement joined in the concert of praise she 
addressed to the Lord.” 2 

Again—and here we seem to catch an echo of the pure 


* * Fioretti,” cap. xxi. (Arnold’s translation). Perhaps I may be allowed to 
remind the incredulous reader that the recent discovery of a large wolf’s skull in 
Gubbio, close to the spot in which Brother Wolf is said to have lived in a cave for two 
years after his taming by the Saint, has gone far to vindicate the truth of this beautiful 
story: and disconcerted those rationalistic scholars who hold that tradition can do 
little else but lie. . 

? De Bussierre, ‘‘ Le Pérou et Ste. Rose de Lime,” p. 256. 


314 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Franciscan spirit, the gaiety of the Troubadours of God— 
' during her last Lent, “each evening at sunset a little bird with 
an enchanting voice came and perched upon a tree beside her 
window, and waited till she gave the sign for him to sing. 
Rose, as soon as she saw her little feathered chorister, made 
herself ready to sing the praises of God, and challenged the 
bird to this musical duel in a song which she had composed for 
this purpose. ‘Begin, dear little bird, she said, ‘begin thy 
lovely song! Let thy little throat, so full of sweet melodies, 
pour them forth: that together we may praise the Lord. Thou 
dost praise thy Creator, I my sweet Saviour: thus we together 
bless the Deity. Open thy little beak, begin and I will follow 
thee : and our voices shall blend in a song of holy joy.’ 

“ At once the little bird began to sing, running through his 
scale to the highest note. Then he ceased, that the saint might 
sing in her turn... thus did they celebrate the greatness of 
God, turn by turn, for a whole hour: and with such perfect 
order, that when the bird sang Rose said nothing, and when she 
sang in her turn the bird was silent, and listened to her with a 
marvellous attention. At last, towards the sixth hour, the saint 
dismissed him, saying, ‘Go, my little chorister, go, fly far away. 
But blessed be my God who never leaves me!’” 1! 

The mystic whose illumination takes such forms as these, who 
feels with this intensity and closeness the bond of love which 
‘binds in one book the scattered leaves of all the universe,” 
dwells in a world for ever shut to the desirous eyes of other 
men. He pierces the veil of imperfection, and beholds Creation 
with the Creator’s eye. The ‘“ Pattern is shown him in the 
Mount.” “The whole consciousness,” says Récéjac, “ is flooded 
with light to unknown depths, under the gaze of love, from 
which nothing escapes. In this state, intensity of vision and 
sureness of judgment are equal: and the things which the seer 
brings back with him when he returns to common life are not 
merely partial impressions, or the separate knowledge of ‘science’ 
or ‘poetry.’ They are rather truths which embrace the world, 
life and conduct: in a word, the wholefconsciousness,” 2 

It is curious to note in the variglis diagrams of experience 
which we have inherited from Ahe more clear-sighted philo- 






* De Bussierre, ‘‘ Le Péréu et Ste. Rose de Lime,”’ p. 415. 
* «*Fondements de la’Connaissance Mystique,” p. 113. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 315 


sophers and seers, indications that they have enjoyed prolonged 
or transitory periods of this higher consciousness ; described by 
Récéjac as the marriage of imaginative vision with moral tran- 
scendence, I think it at least a reasonable supposition that Plato’s 
theory of Ideas owed its inception to some intuition of this kind ; 
for philosophy, though it prate of pure reason, is more often 
found to be based upon psychological experience. The Platonic 
statements as to the veritable existence of the Idea of a house, 
a table, or a bed, and other such painfully concrete and practical 
applications of the doctrine of the ideal, which have annoyed 
many metaphysicians, become explicable on such a psycho- 
logical basis. That illuminated vision in which “all things are 
made new” can afford to embrace the homeliest as well as the 
sublimest things; and, as a matter of experience, it does do 
this, seeing all objects, as Monet saw the hayrick, as “ modes of 
light.” Blake said that his cottage at Felpham was a shadow 
of the angels’ houses, and I have already referred to the case of 
the converted Methodist who saw his horses and hogs on the 
ideal plane.? 

Again, when Plotinus, who is known to have experienced 
ecstatic states, speaks with the assurance of an explorer of an 
“intelligible world,’ and asks us, “What other fire could be a 
better image of the fire which is there, than the fire which is 
here? Or what other earth than this, of the earth which is 
there?” 3 we seem to detect behind the trappings of Neo- 
platonic philosophy a hint of the same type of first-hand 
experience. The unknown minds to whom we owe the Hebrew 
Kabalah found room for it too in their diagram of the soul’s 
ascent towards Reality. The first “Sephira” above Malkuth, 
the World of Matter, or lowest plane upon that Tree of Life 
which is formed by the ten emanations of the Godhead, is, they 
say, “ Yesod,” the “archetypal universe.” In this are contained 
the realities, patterns, or Ideas, whose shadows constitute the 
world of appearance in which we dwell. The path of the 
ascending soul upon the Tree of Life leads him first from 
Malkuth to Yesod: z.e., human consciousness in the course of 
its transcendence passes from the normal illusions of men toa 
more real perception of the world—a perception which is sym- 


* Letters, p. 75. ® Vide supra, p. 231. 
3 Ennead ii. 9, 


316 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


bolized by the “archetypal plane” or world of Platonic 
Ideas. “Everything in temporal nature,” says William Law, 
“is descended out of that which is eternal, and stands as a 
palpable visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to separate 
the grossneéss, death, and darkness of time from it, we find what 
it is in its eternal state.... In Eternal Nature, or the King- 
dom of Heaven, materiality stands in life and light; it is the 
light’s glorious Body, or that garment wherewith light is clothed, 
and therefore has all the properties of light in it, and only 
differs from light as it is its brightness and beauty, as the holder 
and displayer of all its colours, powers, and virtues.” 2 

When Law wrote this, he may have believed that he was 
interpreting to English readers the unique message of his 
master, Jacob Boehme. Asa matter of fact he was spreading 
the news which a long line of practical mystics had been crying 
for centuries into the deaf ears of mankind. He was saying in 
the eighteenth century what Gregory of Nyssa had said in the 
fourth and Erigena in the ninth; telling the secret of that 
“Inviolate Rose” which can never be profaned because it can 
only be seen with the eyes of love. 

This same belief in the perfect world of archetypes lurking 
behind the symbols of sense and lending them a measure of its 
reality, is discoverable in Hermetic philosophy, which is of 
course largely influenced by Kabalism. It receives practical 
application in the course of the “occult education” to which 
neophytes are subjected: a mental and moral training calcu- 
lated to induce lucid vision of this kind. Such vision—a 
by-product in true mysticism, never sought for though often 
achieved—is the end at which magic deliberately aims.2 No 
magician was ever found capable of St. Catherine’s cry, Von 
voglio quello che esce da te. 

That serene and illuminated consciousness of the relation of 
things inward and outward—of the Hidden Treasure and its 
Casket, the energizing Absolute and its expression in Time and 
Space—which we have been studying in this chapter, is at its 
best a state of fine equilibrium ; a sane adjustment of the inner 
and outer life. By that synthesis of love and will which is the 
secret of the heart, the whole world is seen and known in God, 


* "An Appeal to All who Doubt” (Liberal and Mystical Writings of William 
Taw, p. 52). * See Steiner, ‘‘ The Way of Initiation,” cap. v. 


THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SELF 317 


and God is seen and known in the whole world. It is a state of 
exalted emotion: being produced by love, of necessity it pro- 
duces love in its turn. The sharp division between its inlooking 
and outlooking forms which I have adopted for convenience of 
description, is seldom present in the minds of its adepts. They, 
“cleansed, fed, and sanctified,” are initiated into a spiritual 
universe where such clumsy distinctions have little meaning. 
All is alike part of the “ new life” of peaceful charity : and that 
progressive abolition of selfhood which is of the essence of 
mystical development, is alone enough to prevent them from 
drawing a line between the inward personal companionship and 
outward impersonal apprehension of the Real. True [lumina- 
tion, like all real and vital experience, consists rather in the 
breathing of a certain atmosphere, the living at certain levels of 
consciousness, than in the acquirement of specific information. 
It is, as it were, a resting-place upon “the steep stairway of 
love”; where the self turns and sees all about it a transfigured 
universe, radiant with that same Light Divine which nests in its 
own heart and leads it on. 

“When man’s desires are fixed immovably on his Maker 
and as for deadliness and corruption of the flesh he is letted,” 
says Rolle of the purified soul which has attained the illuminated 
state, “then it is no marvel that his strength manly using, first 
as it were heaven being opened, with his understanding he 
beholds high heavenly citizens, and afterwards sweetest heat, as 
it were burning fire, he feels. Then with marvellous sweetness 
he is taught, and so forth in songful noise he is joyed. This, 
therefore, is perfect charity, which no man knows but he that 
hath it took. And he that it has taken, it never leaves : sweetly 
he lives and sickerly he shall die.” | 

Sweetly, it is true, the illuminated mystic may live; but not, 
as some think, placidly. Enlightenment is a symptom of 
crowth: and growth is a living process, which knows no rest. 
The spirit, indeed, is invaded by a heavenly peace ; but it is 
the peace, not of idleness, but of ordered activity. “A rest 
most busy,” in Hilton’s words: a progressive appropriation of 
the Divine. The urgent push of an indwelling spirit aspiring 
to its home in the heart of Reality is felt more and more, as the 
invasion of the normal consciousness by the transcendental 


* Rolle, ‘‘ The Fire of Love,” bk. i. cap. xx. 
, : ’ ‘ 


318 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


personality—the growth of the New Man—proceeds towards 
its term. 

Therefore the great seekers for reality are not as a rule long 
deceived by the exalted joys of Illumination. Intensely aware 
now of the Absolute Whom they adore, they are aware too that 
though known He is unachieved. Even whilst they enjoy the 
rapture of the Divine Presence—of life in a divine, ideal world 
—something, they feel, makes default. Sol vogho Te, O dolce 
Amore. Hence for them that which they now enjoy, and which 
passes the understanding of other men, is not a static con- 
dition ; often it coexists with that travail of the heart which 
Tauler has called “stormy love.” The greater the mystic, the 
sooner he realizes that the Heavenly Manna which has been 
administered to him is not yet That with which the angels are 
full fed. Nothing less will do: and for him the progress of 
illumination is a progressive consciousness that he is destined 
not for the sunny shores of the spiritual universe, but for “the 
vast and stormy sea of the divine.” 

“Here,” says Ruysbroeck of the soul which has been lit by 
the Uncreated Light, “there begins an eternal hunger, which 
shall never more be satisfied. It is the inward eagerness and 
aspiration of the affective powers and created spirit towards an 
Uncreated Good. And as the spirit desires fruition, and is 
indeed invited and urged thereto by God, she continually wishes 
to attain it. Behold! here begin the eternal aspiration and 
eternal effort, of an eternal helplessness! These men are poor 
indeed: for they are hungry, greedy, insatiable! Whatsoever 
they eat and drink they cannot be satisfied, since theirs is the 
hunger of eternity... . Here there are great feasts of food and 
drink, of which none know but those who are bidden; but the 
full satisfaction of fruition is the one dish that lacks them, and 
this is why their hunger is ever renewed. Nevertheless there 
flow in this communion rivers of honey full of all delight; for 
the spirit tastes of these delights under every mode that can be 
conceived. But all this is according to the manner of the 
creatures, and is below God: and this is why there is here an 
eternal hunger and impatience. If God gave to man all the 
gifts which all the saints possess, and all that He has to offer, 
but without giving Himself, the craving spirit would remain 
hungry and unfulfilled.” * 


* “ T’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,’’ 1. ii. cap. liii. 


CHAPTER V 


VOICES AND VISIONS 


This is a controversial subject—Rationalism and Orthodoxy—Both extreme in 
their conclusions—Literal interpretation fatal to vision—Every kind of automatism is 
found in the mystic life—Cannot be neglected by its investigators—Visions may often 
be merely subjective—but sometimes embody transcendental perceptions—Some test 
necessary—Real mystic vision enhances life—Most visionary activity mixed in type— 
Is always symbolic in character—A form of artistic expression—Automatisms char- 
acteristic of all creative genius—Mystic visions and voices are helps to transcendence 
—related to life—Delacroix—Audition—the simplest form of automatism— Three 
kinds of auditions—the Intellectual Word—Madame Guyon—Distinct interior 
words—St. Teresa—False auditions—St. John of the Cross—Character of the true 
audition—St. Teresa—Exterior words—Musical audition—Suso—Divine dialogues— 
Vision—its general character—Most mystics distrust it—Hilton—St. John of the 
Cross—Madame Guyon—Three classes of vision: intellectual, imaginary, and cor- 
poreal—Intellectual vision—its character—St. Teresa—Imaginary vision—it exists 
in all poets—Its two forms—Symbolic visions—Suso—Dante—St. Mechthild of 
Hackborn—Visions of Divine Personality—St. Teresa’s vision of Christ—its tran- 
scendental nature—Active imaginary visions—their character—-The mystic marriage 
of St. Catherine—Transverberation of St. Teresa—Automatic writing in the mystics 
—St. Catherine of Siena—Blake—St. Teresa—Madame Guyon—lacob Boehme-—- 
Conclusion . 


E now come to that eternal battle-ground, the detailed 
discussion of those abnormal psychic phenomena 
which appear so persistently in the history of the 

mystics. That is to say, visions, auditions, automatic script, 
and those dramatic dialogues between the Self and some other 
factor—the Soul, Love, Reason, or the Voice of God—which 
seem sometimes to arise from an exalted and uncontrolled 
imaginative power, sometimes to attain the proportions of 
auditory hallucination. 

Here, moderate persons are like to be hewn in pieces 
between the two “great powers” who have long disputed this 
territory and agreeably occupied their leisure by tearing out 


each other’s hair. On the one hand we have the strangely 
319 


320 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


named rationalists, who feel that they have settled the matter 
once for all by calling attention to the undoubted parallels 
which exist between the bodily symptoms of acute spiritual 
stress and the bodily symptoms of certain forms of disease. 
These considerations, reinforced by those comfortable words 
“auto-suggestion” and “ psychosensorial hallucination ”—which 
do but reintroduce mystery in another and less attractive form 
—enable them to pity rather than blame the peculiarities of the 
great contemplatives. Modern French psychology, in particu- 
lar, revels in this sort of thing: and would, if it had its way, 
fill the wards of the Salpétriere with patients from the Roman 
Calendar. The modern interpreter, says Rufus Jones, finds in 
the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi a point of weakness rather 
than a point of strength: not “the marks of a saint,” but “the 
marks of emotional and physical abnormality.”! This is a very 
moderate statement of the “rational” position, by a writer who 
is in actual sympathy with certain aspects of mysticism. Yet 
it may well be doubted whether that flame of living love which 
could, for one dazzling instant, weld body and soul in one, was 
really a point of weakness in a saint: whether Blake was quite 
as mad as some of his interpreters, or the powers of St. Paul 
and St. Teresa are fully explained on a basis of epilepsy or 
hysteria: whether, finally, it is as scientific as it looks, to lump 
together all visions and voices—from Wandering Willy to the 
Apocalypse of St. John—as examples of unhealthy cerebral 
activity. 

As against all this, the intransigeant votaries of the super- 
natural seem determined to play into the hands of their foes. 
They pin themselves, for no apparent reason, to the objective 
reality and absolute value of visions, voices, and other experi- 
ences which would be classed, in any other department of life, 
as the harmless results of a vivid imagination: and claim as 
examples of miraculous interference with “natural law” psychic 
phenomena which may well be the normal if rare methods by 
which a certain type of intuitive genius actualizes its perceptions 
of the spiritual world.? 

* “Studies in Mystical Religion,” p. 165. Those who wish to study the 
‘‘yationalist ’’ argument in an extreme form are directed to the works of Prof. Janet, 
particularly ‘‘ L’Automatisme psychologique ” and ‘‘ L’Etat mentale des hysteriques.”’ 


? On the difference in this respect between the ‘‘ normal ” and the ‘‘ average,” see 
Granger, ‘‘ The Soul of a Christian,” p. 12. 


wy: 


VOICES AND VISIONS 321 


Materialistic piety of this kind, which would have us believe 
that St. Anthony of Padua really held the Infant Christ in his: 
arms, and that the Holy Ghost truly told the Blessed Angela of 
Foligno that He loved her better than any other woman in the 
Vale of Spoleto, and she knew Him more intimately than 
the Apostles themselves,t is the best friend the “rationalists ” 
possess. It turns dreams into miracles and miracles into 
dreams; and drags down the symbolic visions of genius to the 
level of pious hallucination. Even the profound and beautiful 
significance of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s vision of the 
Sacred Heart—a pictured expression of one of the deepest 
intuitions of the human soul caught up to the contemplation of 
God’s love—has been impaired by the grossly material inter- 
pretation which it has been forced to bear. So, too, the beautiful 
reveries of Suso, the divine visitations experienced by Francis, 
Catherine, Teresa and countless other saints, have been degraded 
in the course of their supposed elevation to the sphere called 
“supernatural ”—a process as fatal to their truth and beauty as 
the stuffing of birds.? 

All this, too, is done in defiance of the great mystics them- 
selves, who are unanimous in warning their disciples against the 
danger of attributing too much importance to “visions” and 
“voices,” or accepting them at their face value as messages from 
God. Nevertheless, these visions and voices are such frequent 
accompaniments of the mystic life, that they cannot be left on 
one side. The messengers of the invisible world knock per- 
sistently at the doors of the senses: and not only at those which 
we refer to hearing and to sight. In other words, supersensual 
intuitions—the contact between man’s finite being and the 
Infinite Being in which it is immersed—can express themselves 
by means of almost any kind of sensory automatism, Strange 
sweet perfumes and tastes, physical sensations of touch, inward 


* See B. Angelae de Fulginio, ‘‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,” cap. 1. 
(English translation, p. 245). 

* Poulain, *‘ Les Graces d’Oraison,” cap. xx., and Ribet’s elaborate work, ‘‘ La 
Mystique Divine,” well represent the ‘‘supernaturalist” position. As against the 
‘‘rationalistic” theory of stigmatization already described, one feels that this last- _ 
named writer hardly advances his own cause when he insists on attributing equal 
validity (a) to the Stigmata as marks of the Divine, (4) to the imprint of a toad, bat, 
spider ‘‘ou de tout autre objet exprimant l’abjection” on the bodies of those who 
have had commerce with the devil (tome iii. p. 482), 

y 


322 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


fires, are reported over and over again in connection with such 
spiritual adventures.t Those symbols under which the mystic 
tends to approach the Absolute easily become objectivized, and 
present themselves to the consciousness as parts of experience, 
rather than as modes of interpretation. The knowledge which 
is obtained in such an approach is wholly transcendental. It 


consists in an undifferentiated act of the whole consciousness, in 


which under the spur of love life draws near to Life. Thought, 
feeling, vision, touch—all are hopelessly inadequate to it: yet 
all, perhaps, may hint at that intense perception of which they 
are the scattered parts. “And we shall endlessly be all had in 
God,” says Julian of this supreme experience, “Him verily 
seeing and fully feeling, Him spiritually hearing and Him 
delectably smelling and sweetly swallowing.” 2 

All those so-called “hallucinations of the senses” which 
appear in the history of mysticism must, then, be considered 
soberly, frankly, and without prejudice in the course of our 
inquiry into the psychology of man’s quest of the Real. The 
question for their critics must really be this: do these automa- 
tisms, which appear so persistently as a part of the contempla- 
tive life, represent merely the dreams and fancies, the old 


digested percepts of the visionary, objectivized and presented 


to his surface-mind in a.concrete form; or, are they ever repre- 


sentations—symbolic, if you like—of some fact, force, or per- | 


sonality, some “ triumphing spiritual power,” external to himself? 
Is the vision only a pictured thought: or, is it the violent effort 
of the self to translate something impressed upon its deeper 
being, some message received from without,3 which projects this 
sharp image and places it before the consciousness ? 

The answer seems to be that the voice or vision may be 
either of these two things: and that pathology and religion 
have both been over-hasty in their eagerness to snatch at these 
phenomena for their own purposes. Many—perhaps most— 
voices do but give the answer which the subject has already 


* Vide infra, quotations from Hilton and St. John of the Cross. Also Rolle, 
‘‘The Fire of Love,” Prologue. E. Gardner, “St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 15. Von 
Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element in Religion,” vol. i. pp. 178-181. 

2 ‘* Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. xliii. I have restored the bold language of 
the original, which is somewhat toned down in modern versions. 

3 Here as elsewhere the reader will kindly recollect that all spatial language is 
merely symbolic when used in connection with spiritual states. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 323 


suggested to itself; many—perhaps most—visions are the pic- 
turings of dreams and desires.2, Some are morbid hallucina- 
tions: some even symptoms of insanity. All, probably, borrow 
their shape, as apart from their content, from suggestions already 
present in the mind of the seer. 

But there are some, experienced by minds of great power 
- and richness, which are crucial for those who have them. These 
bring wisdom to the simple and ignorant, sudden calm to those 
who were tormented by doubts. They flood the personality 
with new light: accompany conversion, or the passage from one 
spiritual state to another: arrive at moments of indecision, 
bringing with them authoritative commands or counsels opposed 
to the inclination of the self: confer a convinced knowledge of 
some department of the spiritual life before unknown. Such 
visions, it is clear, belong to another and higher plane of expe- 
rience from the radiant appearances of our Lady, the piteous 
exhibitions of the sufferings of Christ, which swarm in the lives 
of the saints and contain no feature which is not traceable to 
the subject’s religious enthusiasms or previous knowledge.3 
These, in the apt phrase of Godfernaux, are but “images float- 
ing on the moving deeps of feeling,” 4 not symbolic messages from 
another plane of consciousness. Some test, then, must be 
applied, some basis of classification discovered, if we are to 
distinguish the visions and voices which seem to be symptoms 
of real transcendental activity from those which are only due to 
imagination raised to the zth power, to intense reverie, or even 
to psychic illness. That test, I think, must be the same as 
that which we shall find useful for ecstatic states ; namely, their 
life-enhancing quality. 

Those visions and voices which are the media by which the 
“seeing self” truly approaches the Absolute; which are the 


1 For instance, when Margaret Ebner, the celebrated ‘‘ Friend of God,” heard a 
voice telling her that Tauler, who was the object of great veneration in the circle to 
which she belonged, was the man whom God loved best, and that He dwelt in him 
like melodious music (see Rufus Jones, of. ct¢., p. 257). 

2 <¢ There are persons to be met with,” says St. Teresa, ‘‘and I have known them 
myself, who have so feeble a brain and imagination that they think they see whatever 
they are thinking about, and this is a very dangerous condition ” (“* El Castillo Interior,” 
Moradas Cuartas, cap. iii.). 

3 The book of Angela of Foligno, already cited, contains a rich series of examples, 

4 ** Sur Ja psychologie du Mysticisme’’ (Revue Philosophique, February, 1902), 


324 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


formule under which ontological perceptions are expressed ; are 
found by that self to be sources of helpful energy, charity, and 
courage. They infuse something new in the way of strength, 
knowledge, direction; and leave it—physically, mentally, or 
spiritually—better than they found it. Those which do not 
owe their inception to the contact of the soul with external 
reality——in theological language do not “come from God”—do 
not have this effect. At best, they are but the results of the . 
selfs turning over of her treasures: at worst, they are the 
dreams—sometimes the diseased dreams—of an active, rich, 
but imperfectly controlled subliminal consciousness, 

Since it is implicit in the make-up of the mystical tempera- 
ment, that the subliminal consciousness should be active and 
rich—and since the unstable nervous organization which goes 
with it renders it liable to illness and exhaustion—it is not 
surprising to find that the visionary experience even of the 
greatest mystics is mixed in type. Once automatism has 
established itself in a person, it may as easily become the 
expression of folly as of wisdom. In the moments when inspira- 
tion has ebbed, old forgotten superstitions may take its place. 
When Julian of Norwich in her illness saw the “ horrible showing” 
of the Fiend, red with black freckles, which clutched at her 
throat with its paws:" when St. Teresa was visited by Satan, who 
left a smell of brimstone behind, or when she saw him sitting 
on the top of her breviary and dislodged him by the use of holy 
water,? it is surely reasonable to allow that we are in the 
presence of visions which tend towards the psychopathic type: 
and which are expressive of little else but an exhaustion and 
temporary loss of balance on the subject’s part, which allowed 
her intense consciousness of the reality of evil to assume a 
concrete form.3 

Because we allow this, however, it does not follow that all 
the visionary experience of such a subject is morbid: any more 
than “Cdipus Tyrannus” invalidates “ Prometheus Unbound,” 


t « Revelations of Divine Love,”’ cap. Ixvi. ? Vida, cap. xxxi. §§ 5 and Io. 

3 Thus too in the case of St. Catherine of Siena, the intense spiritual strain of that 
three years’ retreat which I have already described (sufva, Pt. II. Cap. I.) showed 
itself towards the end of the period by a change in the character of her visions. 
These, which had previously been wholly concerned with intuitions of the good and 
beautiful, now took on an evil aspect and greatly distressed her (Vita (Acta SS.), 
i, xi. 1; see E. Gardner, “ St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 20). 


Hae. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 325 


or occasional attacks of dyspepsia invalidate the whole process 
of nutrition. The perceptive power and creative genius of 
mystics, as of other great artists, sometimes goes astray. That 
visions or voices should sometimes be the means by which the 
soul consciously assimilates the nourishment it needs, is con- 
ceivable: it is surely also conceivable that by the same means 
it may present to the surface-intelligence things which are 
productive of unhealthy rather than of healthy reactions. 

If we would cease, once for all, to regard visions and voices 
as objective, and be content to see in them forms of symbolic 
expression, ways in which the subconscious activity of the 
spiritual self reaches the surface-mind, many of the dis- 
harmonies noticeable in visionary experience, which have 
teased the devout, and delighted the agnostic, would fade 
away. Visionary experience is—or at least may be—the 
outward sign of a real experience. It is a picture which 
the mind constructs, it is true, from raw materials already at 
its disposal: as the artist constructs his picture with canvas 
and paint. But, as the artist’s paint and canvas picture is the 
fruit, not merely of contact between brush and canvas, but also 
of a more vital contact between his creative genius and visible 
beauty or truth ; so too we may see in vision, where the subject 
is a mystic, the fruit of a more mysterious contact between the 
visionary and a transcendental beauty or truth. Such a vision, 
that is to say, is the “accident” which represents and enshrines 
a “substance” unseen: the paint and canvas picture which 
tries to show the surface consciousness that ineffable sight, 
that ecstatic perception of good or evil—for neither extreme has 
the monopoly—to which the deeper, more real soul has attained. 
The transcendental powers take for this purpose such material 
as they can find amongst the hoarded beliefs and memories of 
the self.t Hence Plotinus sees the Celestial Venus, Suso the 


* An excellent example of such appropriation of material is related with apparent 
good faith by Huysmans (‘‘ Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam,” p. 258): ‘‘ Lydwine 
found again in heaven those forms of adoration, those ceremonial practices of the 
divine office, which she had known here below during her years of health. The 
Church Militant had been, in fact, initiated by the inspiration of its apostles, its 
popes, and its saints into the liturgic joys of Paradise.” In this same vision, which 
occurred on Christmas Eve, when the hour of the Nativity was rung from the belfries 
of heaven, the Divine Child appeared on His Mother’s knee: just as the créche is 
exhibited in Catholic churches the moment that Christmas has dawned. 


326 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Eternal Wisdom, St. Teresa the Humanity of Christ, Blake 
the strange personages of his prophetic books: others more 
obviously symbolic objects. St. Ignatius Loyola, for instance, 
in a moment of lucidity, “saw the most Holy Trinity as it were 
under the likeness of a triple plectrum or of three spinet keys ” 
and on another occasion “the Blessed Virgin without distinction 
of members,” ! 

Visions and voices, then, may stand in the same relation to 
the mystic as pictures, poems, and musical compositions stand to 
the great painter, poet, musician. They are the artistic ex- 
pressions and creative results (a) of thought, (4) of intuition, 
(c) of direct perception. All would be ready to acknowledge 
how conventional and imperfect of necessity are those tran- 
scripts of perceived Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which we 
owe to artistic genius: how unequal is their relation to reality. 
But this is not to say that they are valueless or absurd. So too 
with the mystic, whose proceedings in this respect are closer to 
those of the artist than is generally acknowledged. In both 
types there is a constant and involuntary work of translation 
going on, by which Reality. is interpreted in the terms of 
appearance. In both, a peculiar mental make-up conduces to 
this result. 

In these subjects, the state of reverie tends easily to a 
visionary character: thought becomes pictorial, auditory or 
rhythmic as the case may be. Concrete images, balanced 
harmonies, elusive yet recognizable, surge up mysteriously 
without the intervention of the will, and place themselves 
before the mind. Thus the painter really sees his unpainted 
picture, the novelist hears the conversation of his characters, 
the poet receives his cadences ready-made, the musician listens 
to a veritable music which “ pipes to the spirit ditties of no 
tone.” In the mystic, the same type of activity constantly 
appears. Profound meditation takes a pictorial form. Apt 
symbols which suggest themselves to his imagination become 
objectivized. The message that he longs for is heard within 
his mind. Hence, those “interior voices” and “ imaginary 
visions” which are sometimes—as in Suso—indistinguishable 
from the ordinary accompaniments of intense artistic activity. 

Where, however, artistic ‘ automatisms” spend themselves 


* Testament, cap. iii. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 327 


upon the artist’s work, mystical “automatisms ” in their highest 
forms have to do with that transformation of personality which 
is the essence of the mystic life. They are media by which the 
self measures its approximation to the Absolute and is guided 
on its upward way. Moreover, they are co-ordinated. The 
voice and the vision go together: corroborate one another, 
and “work out right” in relation to the life of the self. Thus 
St. Catherine of Siena’s “ mystic marriage ” was prefaced by a 
voice, which ever said in answer to her prayers, “I will espouse 
thee to Myself in faith”; and the vision in which that union 
was consummated was again initiated by a voice saying, “1 will 
this day celebrate solemnly with thee the feast of the betrothal 
of thy soul, and even as I promised I will espouse thee to 
Myself in faith.” “Such automatisms as these,” says Dela- 
croix, “are by no means scattered and incoherent. They are 
systematic and progressive: they are governed by an interior 
aim; they have, above all, a teleological character. They 
indicate the continuous intervention of a being at once wiser 
and more powerful than the ordinary character and reason ; 
they are the realization, in visual and auditory images, of a secret 
and permanent personality of a superior type to the conscious 
personality. They are its voice, the exterior projection of its 
life. They translate to the conscious personality the sug- 
gestions of the subconscious: and they permit the con- 
tinuous penetration of the conscious personality by these 
deeper activities. They establish a communication between 
these two planes of existence, and, by their imperative nature, - 
they tend to make the inferior subordinate to the superior.” 2 


AUDITION 


The simplest and as a rule the first way in which auto- 
matism shows itself, is in “voices” or auditions. The mystic 
becomes aware of Something which speaks to him either 
clearly or implicitly, giving him abrupt and unexpected 
orders and encouragements. The reality of his contact with 
the Divine Life is thus brought home to him by a device 
with which the accidents of human intercourse have made him 


* E. Gardner, ‘‘ St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 25. 
? Delacroix, ‘* Etudes sur le Mysticisme,’’ p. 114. 


328 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


familiar. His subliminal mind, soaked as it now is in tran- 
scendental perceptions, “at one with the Absolute,” irradiated 
by the Uncreated Light, but still dissociated from the surface 
intelligence which it is slowly educating, seems to that surface 
self like another being. Hence its messages are often heard, 
literally, as Voices: either (1) the “immediate” or inarticulate 
voice, which the auditive mystic knows so well, but finds it so 
difficult to define; (2) the distinct interior voice, perfectly 
articulate, but recognized as speaking only within the mind; 
(3) by a hallucination which we have all experienced in dream 
or reverie, the exterior voice, which appears to be speaking 
externally to the subject and to be heard by the outward | 
ear. This, the traditional classification of auditions, also 
answers exactly to the three main types of vision—(r1) intellec- 
tual, (2) imaginary, (3) corporeal. 

Of these three kinds of voices the mystics are unanimous in 
their opinion that the first and least “marvellous” is by far the 
best: belonging indeed to an entirely different plane of con- 
sciousness from the uttered interior or exterior “ word.” 
“Distinct interior words,’ says Madame Guyon, “are very 
subject to illusion, The Devil is responsible for many of 
them: and when they come from our good angel (for God 
Himself never speaks in this manner) they do not always 
mean that which they say, and one seldom finds that what 
is thus predicted comes to pass. For when God causes words 
of this kind to be brought to us by His angels, He understands 
them in His way, and we take them in ours, and this it is which 
deceives us. The word which God speaks without interme- 
diary is no other than His WorD [Logos] in the soul: a 
substantial word, silent and inarticulate, a vivifying and 
energizing word; as has been said, dzxit et facta sunt. This 
word is never for a moment dumb nor sterile: this word is 
heard ceaselessly in the centre of the soul which is disposed 
thereto, and returns to its Principle as pure as when it came 
forth therefrom.” ! 

“Let Thy good Spirit enter my heart and there be heard 
without utterance, and without the sound of words speak all 
truth,” says a prayer attributed to St. Ambrose,? exactly descri- 


* Vie, pt. i. cap. ix. 
? Missale Romanum. Praeparatio ad Missam; Die Dominica. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 329 


bing the function of these unmediated or “intellectual words.” 
Dynamic messages of this kind, imperative intuitions which 
elude the containing formulae of speech, are invariably attributed 


_ by the self to the direct action of the Divine. They bring with 
_ them an unquestionable authority, an infusion of new knowledge 
or new life. They are, in fact, not messages but actual “inva- 


sions” from beyond the threshold : sudden emergences of that 
hidden Child of the Absolute which mystics call the “spark of 
the soul” and of which it has been truly said, “ Adyssus abyssuni 
zmvocat.” 

‘Distinct interior words,” on the other hand, are not invari- 
ably authoritative for those who hear them: though St. Teresa, 
whose brilliant self-criticisms are our best source of information 
on mystical auditions, gives to them a higher place in spiritual 
experience than Madame Guyon’s devotion to “naked orison” 
will permit her to du. She, too, considers that, though they 
“come from God,” they are not due to direct contact with the 


Divine: but that they may be distinguished from those 


“words” which result merely from voluntary activity of the 
imagination as much by the sense of certitude, peace and 
interior joy which they produce, as by the fact that they force 


themselves upon the attention in spite of its resistance, and 


bring with them knowledge which was not previously within 
the field of consciousness. That is to say, they are really 
automatic presentations of the result of mystic intuition, not 
mere rearrangements of the constituents of thought. Hence 


they bring to the surface-self new material: have an actual 


value for life. 

Those purely self-created locutions, or rearrangements of 
thought “which the mind self-recollected forms and fashions 
within itself”—often difficult to distinguish from true automatic 


-audition—are called by Philip of the Trinity, St. John of the 


Cross and other mystical theologians “successive words.” 
They feel it to be of the highest importance that the con- 
templative should learn to distinguish such hallucinations 
from real transcendental perceptions presented in auditive 
form. 

“TI am terrified,” says St. John of the Cross, with his 
customary blunt common sense, “ by what passes among us in 


* “Fl Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sextas, cap. iii. 


330 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


these days. Anyone who has barely begun to meditate, if he 
becomes conscious of these words during his self-recollection, 
pronounces them forthwith to be the work of God, and, con- 
sidering them to be so, says, ‘God has spoken to me,’ or, ‘I 
have had an answer from God.’ But itis not true: such an one 
has only been speaking to himself. Besides, the affection and 
desire for these words, which men encourage, cause them to 
reply to themselves and then to imagine that God has spoken.” ! 
These are the words of one who was at once the sanest of saints 
and the most penetrating of psychologists: words which our 
modern unruly amateurs of the “subconscious” might well 
take to heart. 

True auditions are usually heard when the mind is in a 
state of deep absorption without conscious thought: that is to 
say, at the most favourable of all moments for contact with the 
transcendental world. They translate into articulate language 
some aspect of that ineffable apprehension of Reality which the 
contemplative enjoys: crystallize those clairvoyant intuitions, 
those prophetic hints which surge in on him so soon as he lays 
himself open to the influence of the supra-sensible. Sometimes, 
however, mystical intuition takes the form of a sudden and 
ungovernable uprush of knowledge from the deeps of person- 
ality. Then, auditions may break in upon the normal activities 
of the self with startling abruptness. It is in such cases that 
their objective and uncontrollable character is most sharply 
felt. However they may appear, they are, says St. Teresa, 
“very distinctly formed; but by the bodily ear they are not 
heard. They are, however, much more clearly understood than 
if they were heard by the ear. It is impossible not to under- 
stand them, whatever resistance we may offer. .. . The words 
formed by the understanding effect nothing, but when our Lord 
speaks, it is a¢ once word and work. . . . The human locution [zz., 
the work of imagination]is as something we cannot well make 
out, as if we were half asleep: but the divine locution is a voice 
so clear, that not a syllable of its utterance is lost. It may 
occur, too, when the understanding and the soul are so troubled 
and distracted that they cannot form one sentence correctly : 
and yet grand sentences, perfectly arranged, such as the soul 
in its most recollected state never could have formed, 


t ‘© Subida del Monte Carmelo,” 1. ii. cap. xxix. 4. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 331 


-are uttered: and at the first word, as I have said, change it 
utterly.” 

St. Teresa’s whole mystic life was governed by voices: her 
active career as a foundress was guided by them. They advised 
her in small things as in great. Often they interfered with her 
plans, ran counter to her personal judgment, forbade a founda- 

tion on which she was set, or commanded one which appeared 
imprudent or impossible. They concerned themselves with 
journeys, with the purchase of houses; they warned her of 
coming events.2 She seldom resisted them, though it con- 
stantly happened that the action on which they insisted seemed 
the height of folly: and though they frequently involved her in 
hardships and difficulties, she never had cause to regret this 
blind reliance upon decrees which she regarded as coming 
direct from God, and which certainly did emanate from a life 
greater than her own, in touch with transcendent levels of 
consciousness. 

So far from mere vague intuitions are the “ distinct interior 
words” which the mystic hears within his mind, that Suso is 

able to state that the hundred meditations on the Passion thus 
revealed to him were spoken in German and not in Latin.3 St. 
Teresa’s own auditions were all of this interior kind—some 
“distinct” and some “substantial” or inarticulate—as her 
corresponding visions were nearly all of the “intellectual” or 
“imaginary ” sort: that is to say,she was not subject to sensible 
hallucination. Often, however, the boundary is overpassed, and 

the locution seems to be heard by the mystic’s outward ear, as 
in the case of those voices which guided the destinies of the 
Blessed Joan of Arc, or the Figure upon the Cross which spoke 
to St. Francis of Assisii We then have the third form— 
“exterior words ”—which the mystics for the most part regard 
with suspicion and dislike. 

Sometimes audition assumes a musical rather than a verbal 
character: a form of perception which probably corresponds to 
the temperamental bias of the self, the ordered sweetness of 
Divine Harmony striking responsive chords in the music-loving 


™ Vida, cap. xxv. §§ 2, 5,6. See also for a detailed discussion of all forms of 
auditions St. John of the Cross, of. c#t., 1. ii. caps. xxviii. to xxxi. 

2 ‘6 El Libro de las Fundaciones ”’ is full of instances. 

3 Suso, ‘‘ Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,” Prologue. 


332 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


soul. The lives of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, 
and Richard Rolle provide obvious instances of thist: but 
Suso, in whom automatism assumed its richest and most varied 
forms, has also given in his autobiography some characteristic 
examples, 

“One day . . . whilst the Servitor was still at rest, he heard 
within himself a gracious melody by which his heart was greatly 
moved. And at the moment of the rising of the morning star, 
a deep sweet voice sang within him these words, Stella Maria 
maris, hodie processit ad ortum. That is to say, Mary Star of 
the Sea is risen to-day. And this song which he heard was so 
spiritual and so sweet, that his soul was transported by it and 
he too began to sing joyously. ... And one day—it was in 
carnival time—the Servitor had continued his prayers until the 
moment when the bugle of the watch announced the dawn. 
Therefore, he said to himself, Rest for an instant, before you 
salute the shining Morning Star. And, whilst that his senses 
were at rest, behold! angelic spirits began to sing the fair 
Respond : ‘ //uminare, illuminare, Jerusalem!’ And this song 
was echoed with a marvellous sweetness in the deeps of his soul. 
And when the angels had sung for some time his soul over- 
flowed with joy: and his feeble body being unable to support 
such happiness, burning tears escaped from his eyes.” 2 

Closely connected on the one hand with the phenomena of 
automatic words, on the other with those of prophecy and 
inspiration, is the prevalence in mystical literature of revelations 
which take the form of dialogue: of intimate colloquies between 
Divine Reality and the Soul. The Revelations of Julian of 
Norwich and St. Catherine of Siena, and many of those of the 
Blessed Angela of Foligno, appear to have been received by 
them in this way. Weseem as we read them to be present at 
the outpourings of the Divine Mind, snatching at some form of 
words on Its way through the human consciousness. We feel 
on the one hand a “one-ness with the Absolute” on the part of 
the mystic which has made her really, for the time being, the 
“voice of God”: whilst on the other we recognize in her the 
persistence of the individual, exalted but not yet wholly absorbed 


* “Fioretti,” ‘‘ Delle Istimate”” 2. E. Gardner, ‘‘ St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 15. 
Rolle, ‘‘ The Fire of Love,” bk. i. cap. xvi. 
2 Leben, cap. vi. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 333 


in the Divine, whose questions, here and there, break in upon 
the revelation which is mediated to it by its deeper mind. 

Duologues of this sort are reported with every appear- 
ance of realism and good faith by Suso, Tauler, Mechthild of 
Magdeburg, Angela of Foligno, St. Teresa, and countless 
‘other mystics. The third book of the “Imitation of Christ” 
contains some conspicuously beautiful examples, which may 
or may not be due to literary artifice. The self, wholly 
obsessed by the intimate sense of divine companionship, 
receives its messages in the form of “distinct interior words” ; 
as of an alien voice, speaking within the mind with such an 
accent of validity and spontaneity as to leave no room for 
doubt as to its character. Often, as in Julian’s Revelations, 
the discourses of the “ Divine Voice,” its replies to the eager 
questions of the self, are illustrated by imaginary visions. 
Since these dialogues are, on the whole, more commonly 
experienced in the illuminated than the unitive part of the 
Mystic Way, that self—retaining a clear consciousness of its 
own separateness, and recognizing the Voice as personal and 
distinct from its own soul—naturally enters into a communion 
which has an almost conversational character, replies to ques- 
tions or asks others in its turn: and in this dramatic style the 
content of its intuitions is gradually expressed. We have 
then an extreme form of that dissociation which we all experi- 
ence in a slight degree when we “argue with ourselves.” But 
in this case one of the speakers is become the instrument of a 
power other than itself, and communicates to the mind new 
wisdom and new life. 

The peculiar rhythmical language of genuine mystic dia- 
logue of this kind—for often enough, as in Suso’s “ Book of the 
Eternal Wisdom,” it is deliberately adopted as a literary device 
—-is an indication of its automatic character. Expression, 
once it is divorced from the critical action of the surface intelli- 
gence, always tends to assume a dithyrambic form. Measure 
and colour, exaltation of language, here take a more important 
place than the analytic intellect will generally permit. This 
feature is easily observable in prophecy, and in automatic 
writing. It forms an interesting link with poetry which—in 
so far as it is genuine and spontaneous—is largely the result 


* Compare p. 95. 


334 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of subliminal activity. Life, which eludes language, can yet— 
we know not why—be communicated by rhythm: and the 
mystic fact is above all else the communication of a greater 
Life. Hence we must not take it amiss if the voice of the 
Absolute, as translated to us by those mystics who are alone 
capable of hearing it, often seems to adopt the “grand 
manner.” 


VISION 


Let us pass now from the effort of man’s deeper mind to 
speak truth to his surface-intelligence, to the effort of the same 
mysterious power to skow truth: in psychological language, 
from auditory to visual automatism. “ Vision,” that vaguest of 
words, has been used by the friends and enemies of the mystics 
to describe or obscure a wide range of experience: from form- 
less intuition, through crude optical hallucination, to the volun- 
tary visualizations common to the artistic mind. In it we must 
include that personal and secret vision which is the lover's 
glimpse of Perfect Love, and the great pictures seen by clair- 
voyant prophets acting in their capacity as eyes of the race. 
Of these, the two main classes of vision, says Denis the Car- 
thusian, the first kind are to be concealed, the second declared. 
The first are more truly mystic, the second are more prophetic 
in type. Even so, and ruling out prophetic vision from our 
inquiry, a sufficient variety of experience remains in the purely 
mystical class. St. Teresa’s fluid and formless apprehension of 
the Trinity, her concrete visions of Christ, Mechthild of Magde- 
burg’s poetic dreams, Suso’s sharply pictured allegories, even 
Blake’s soul of a flea, all come under this head. 

Now since no one can know much of what it is really like 
~ to have a vision but the visionaries themselves, it will be inter- 
esting to see what they have to say on this subject: and to 
notice the respects in which their self-criticisms agree with the 
conclusions of psychology. We forget, whilst arguing indus- 
triously on these matters, that it is really as impossible for 
those who have never experienced a voice or vision to discuss 
it with intelligence, as it is for stay-at-homes to discuss the 
passions of the battle-field on the materials supplied by war 
correspondents. No second-hand account of a vision can truly 
report the experience of the person whose perceptions or 


VOICES AND VISIONS 335 


illusions present themselves in this form. “We cannot,” says 
Récéjac, “remind ourselves too often that the mystic act con- 
sists in relations between the Absolute and Freedom which are 
incommunicable. We shall never know, for instance, what was 
the state of consciousness of some citizen of the antique world 
when he gave himself without reserve to the inspiring sugges- 
tions of the Sacred Fire or some other image which evoked 
the infinite.” Neither shall we ever know, unless it be our 
good fortune to attain to it, the secret of that consciousness 
which is able to apprehend the Transcendent in visionary 
terms. 

The first thing we notice when we come to this inquiry is 
that the mystics are all but unanimous in their refusal to 
attribute importance to any kind of visionary experience? The 
natural timidity and stern self-criticism with which they 
approach auditions is here greatly increased: and this, if taken 
to heart, might well give pause to their more extreme enemies 
and defenders. “If it be so,” says Hilton of automatisms in 
general, “that thou see any manner of light or brightness with 
thy bodily eye or in imagination, other than every man seeth ; 
or if thou hear any pleasant wonderful sounding with thy ear, 
or in thy mouth any sweet sudden savour, other than what thou 
knowest to be natural, or any heat in thy breast like fire, or 
any manner of delight in any part of thy body, or if a spirit 
appears bodily to thee as it were an angel to comfort thee or 
teach thee; or if any such feeling, which thou knowest well 
that it cometh not of thyself, nor from any bodily creature, 
beware in that time or soon after, and wisely consider the 
stirrings of thy heart ; for if by occasion of the pleasure and 
liking thou takest in the said feeling or vision thou feelest thy 
heart drawn... from the inward desire of virtues and of 
spiritual knowing and feeling of God, for to set the sight of thy 
heart and thy affection, thy delight and thy rest, principally in 
the said feelings or visions, supposing that to be a part of 


* « Les Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 149. 

2 Here, as on other points, the exception which proves the rule is Blake. But 
Blake’s visions differed in some important respects from those of his fellow-mystics ; 
they were ‘‘ corporeal,” not “imaginary ’’ in type, and do not so much represent 
visualized intuitions as actual and constant perceptions of the inhabitants of that 
‘‘real and eternal world” in which he held that it was man’s privilege to dwell. 


336 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


heavenly joy or angels’ bliss ... then is this feeling very 
suspicious to come from the enemy ; and therefore, though it 
be never so liking and wonderful, refuse it and assent not 
thereto.” Nearly every master of the contemplative life has 
spoken to the same effect: none, perhaps, more strongly than that 
stern and virile lover of the Invisible, St. John of the Cross, 
who was relentless in hunting down even the most “spiritual” 
illusions, eager to purge mind as well as morals of all taint 
of the unreal. 

“ Spiritual men,” he says, “are occasionally liable to repre- 
sentations and objects, set before them in a supernatural way. 
They sometimes see the forms and figures of those of another 
life, saints or angels, good and evil, or certain extraordinary 
_ lights and brightness. They hear strange words, sometimes 
seeing those who utter them and sometimes not. They have 
a sensible perception at times of most sweet odours without 
knowing whence they proceed. ... Still, though all these may 
happen to the bodily senses in the way of God, we must never 
rely on them nor encourage them; yea, rather we must fly 
from them, without examining whether they be good or evil. 
For, inasmuch as they are exterior and in the body, there is 
the less certainty of their being from God. It is more natural 
that God should communicate Himself through the spirit— 
wherein there is greater security and profit for the soul—than 
through the senses, wherein there is usually much danger and 
delusion, because the bodily sense decides upon, and judges, 
spiritual things, thinking them to be what itself feels them to 
be, when in reality they are as different as body and soul, 
sensuality and reason.” 2 

Again, “in the high state of the union of love, God does 
not communicate Himself to the soul under the disguise of 
imaginary visions, similitudes or figures, neither is there place 
for such, but mouth to mouth. .. . The soul, therefore, that will 
ascend to this perfect union with God, must be careful not to 
lean upon imaginary visions, forms, figures, and particular intel- 
ligible objects, for these things can never serve as proportionate 
or proximate means towards so great an end ; yea, rather they 


* ‘©The Scale of Perfection,’’ bk. i. cap. xi. 
2 <«Subida del Monte Carmelo,’ 1. ii. cap. xi. The whole chapter should be 


read in this connection, 


VOICES AND VISIONS 3o7 


are an obstacle in the way, and therefore to be guarded against 
and rejected.” ! 

So, too, Madame Guyon. Ecstasies, raptures, and visions, 
she says, are far inferior to “pure orison”—that dumb absorp- 
tion in God which she learned at the time of her conversion. 
“ Visions are experienced in those powers which are inferior to 
the will: and they should always have their effect in the will, 
and afterwards they should lose themselves in the experience 
of that which one has seen, known, and heard in these states: 
for without this the soul will never arrive at perfect union. 
Otherwise, that which she will have, and to which she may even 
give the name of union, will be only a mediated union, that is 
to say, an influx of the gifts of God into her powers [z., illumi- 
nation]; but this is not God Himself. It is therefore very © 
important to prevent souls from resting in visions and ecstasies, 
for this may check them almost for their whole lives. More, 
these graces are greatly subject to illusion. . .. Of these sort © 
of gifts, the least pure, and those most subject to illusion, are 
visions and ecstasies. Raptures and revelations [exalted and 
abrupt intuitions] are not quite so much: though these also are 
not a little so.” “The vision,” says Madame Guyon again, “is 
never God Himself and hardly ever Jesus Christ, as those who 
have had it suppose... it seems to me that the apparitions 
which we believe to be Jesus Christ Himself are like what we 
see when the sun is reflected in the clouds so brilliantly that 
those who are not in the secret think that it is the sun which 
they see, although it is only his reflection. Thus it is. that 
Jesus Christ is imaged in our minds in what is called /ztellectual 
Vistons, which are the most perfect... . Phantoms and pious 
pictures also imprint themselves on the imagination. There 
are also corporeal visions, the least spiritual of all, and the most 
subject to wlluszon.”? 

_ Vision, then, is recognized by the true contemplative as at 
best a very imperfect, oblique, and untrustworthy method of 
apprehension : it is ungovernable, capricious, liable to deception, 
and the greater its accompanying hallucination the more sus- 
picious it becomes. One and all, however, distinguish different 
classes of visionary experience ; and differentiate sharply between 
the value of the vision which is “ felt ” rather than seen, and the. 


* **Subida del Monte Carmelo,”’ I. ii. cap. xvi. * Vie, pt. i. cap. ix, 
Zz 


‘ 


338 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


true optical hallucination which is perceived, exterior to the 
subject, by the physical sight. 

We may trace in visions, as we have done in voites* for 
these are, from the psychologist’s point of view, strictly parallel 


- phenomena—a progressive externalization on the self’s part of 
- those concepts or intuitions which form the bases of all auto- 


matic states. Three main groups have been distinguished by 
the mystics, and illustrated over and over again from their 
experiences. These are (1) Intellectual, (2) Imaginary, and (3) © 
Corporeal vision: answering to (1) Substantial or inarticulate, 
(2) Interior and distinct,(3) Exterior words. With the first two 
we must now concern ourselves. As to corporeal vision, it has 
few peculiarities of interest to the student of pure mysticism. 
Like the “exterior word” it is little else than a more or less 
uncontrolled externalization of inward memories, thoughts, or 
intuitions—often, as Madame Guyon acutely observed, of some 
pious picture which has become imprinted on the mind— 
which may, in some subjects, attain the dimensions of true 
sensorial hallucination. 

(1) Intellectual Viston.—The “intellectual vision,” like the 
“substantial word” as described to us by the mystics, is of so 
elusive, spiritual, and formless a kind that it is very hard to 
distinguish it from that act of pure contemplation in which it 
generally takes its rise. These moods and apprehensions of the 
soul are so closely linked together—the names applied to them 
are so often little more than the struggles of different individuals 
to describe by analogy an experience which is oze—that we risk 
a loss of accuracy the moment that classification begins. The 
intellectual vision, so far.as we can understand it, seems to be a 
something not sought but put before the mind, and seen or per- 
ceived by the whole self by means of a sense which is neither 
sight nor feeling, but partakes of the character of both. It is 
intimate but indescribable: definite, yet impossible to define. 
There is a passage in the “ Consolations” of Angela of Foligno 
which describes very vividly the sequence of illuminated states 
which leads up to and includes the intuitions which form the 
substance of this “formless vision” and its complement the 
“formless word”: and this does far more towards making us 
realize its nature than the most painstaking psychological 
analysis could ever do. 


ee 2 ww 


VOICES AND VISIONS 339 


“Tt must be known,” says Angela, “that God cometh some- 
times unto the soul when it hath neither called nor prayed unto 
nor summoned Him. And He doth instil into the soul a fire 
not customary, wherein it doth greatly delight and rejoice ; and 
it doth believe that this hath been wrought by God Himself, but 
this is not certain. Presently the soul doth perceive that God Its 
inwardly within itself because—albeit it cannot behold Him 
within—it doth nevertheless perceive that His grace is present 
with it, wherein it doth greatly delight. Yet is not even this 
certain. Presently it doth further perceive that God cometh 
unto it with most sweet words, wherein it delighteth yet more, 
and with much rejoicing doth it feel God within it; yet do 
some doubts still remain, albeit but few. . . . Further, when God 
cometh unto the soul, it is sometimes given unto it to behold 
Him; and it beholdeth Him devoid of any bodily shape or 
form, and more clearly than doth one man behold another. 
For the eyes of the soul do behold a spiritual and not a bodily 
presence, of the which I am not able to speak because words and 
imagination do fail me. And in very truth the soul doth 
rejoice in that sight with an ineffable joy, and regardeth nought 
else, because this it is which doth fill it with most inestimable 
satisfaction, This searching and beholding (wherein God is seen 
in such a manner that the soul can behold naught else) is so 
profound that much doth it grieve me that I cannot make 
manifest aught whatsoever of it ; seeing that it is not a thing 
the which can be touched or imagined or judged of.” 

Intellectual vision, then, seems to be closely connected with 
that “consciousness of the Presence of God” which we dis- 
cussed in the last chapter: though the contemplatives them- 
selves declare that it differs from it.2 It is distinguished 
apparently from that more or less diffused consciousness of 
Divine Immanence by the fact that, although unseen of the 
eyes, it can be exactly located in space. The mystic’s general 
awareness of the divine is here focussed upon one point—a 
point to which some theological or symbolic character is at once 
attached. The result is a sense of presence so concrete, defined, 


* B. Angelae de Fulginio, ‘‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,” cap. lii. (English 
translation, p. 24). 

2 “Tt is not like that presence of God which is frequently felt . ... this is a great 
grace . . . but it is not vision” (St. Teresa, Vida, cap. xxvii. § 6). 


340 AN INTRODUCTION ‘TO MYSTICISM 


and sharply personal that, as St. Teresa says, it carries more con- 
viction than bodily sight. This invisible presence is generally 
identified by Christian mystics rather with the Humanity of 
Christ than with the unconditioned Absolute. “In the prayer 
of union and of quiet,” says St. Teresa again, “certain inflow- 
ings of the Godhead are present ; but in the wzston the Sacred 
Humanity also, together with them, is pleased to be our com- 
panion and to do us good.”! “When one is not thinking at all 
of any such favour,” she says again, “and has not even had the 
idea of meriting it, suddenly one feels at one’s side Our Lord 
Jesus Christ, wzthout seeing Him either with the eyes of the 
body or those of the soul. This sort of vision is called intellectual. 
I do not know why. .. . Intellectual visions do not go quickly, like 
imaginary ones, but last several days, sometimes more than a 
year... .. We know that God is present in all our actions: but 
such is the infirmity of our nature, that we often lose sight of 
this truth. Here this forgetfulness is impossible, because Our 
Lord, Who is close to the soul, keeps her constantly awake: 
and as she has an almost continual love for That which she sees, 
or rather feels close to her, she receives the more frequently the 
favours of which we have spoken.” 2 

In such a state—to which the term “vision” is barely applic- 
able—it will be observed that consciousness is at its highest, 
and hallucination at its lowest point. Nothing is seen, even 
with the eyes of the mind: as, in the parallel case of the 
“substantial word,” nothing is said. It is pure apprehension : 
in the one case of Personality, in the other of knowledge. “ The 
immediate vision of the naked Godhead,” says Suso of this, “is 
without doubt the pure truth: a vision is to be esteemed the 
more noble the more intellectual it is, the more it is stripped of 
all image and approaches the state of pure contemplation.” 3 

We owe to St. Teresa our finest first-hand account of this 
strange condition of “awareness.” It came upon her abruptly, 
after a period of psychic distress, and seemed to her to be an 
answer to her unwilling prayers that she might be “led” by 
some other way than that of “interior words” ; which were, in 
the opinion of her director, “so suspicious.” “I could not force 


* Op. ctt., loc. cit. 
? St. Teresa, “ El Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sextas, cap. viii. 
3 Leben, cap. liv. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 341 


myself,” she says, “to desire the change, nor believe that I was 
under the influence of Satan. Though I was doing all I could 
to believe the one and to desire the c ther, it was not in my power 
to do so.” She resolved this divided state by making an act of 
total surrender to the will of God: and it seems to have been as . 
the result of this release of stress, this willing receptivity, that 
the new form of automatism suddenly developed itself, rein- 
forcing and justifying the auditions, and bringing peace and 
assurance to the distracted surface-self. 

“At the end-of two years spent in prayer by myself and 
others for this end, namely, that our Lord would either lead me 
by another way, or show the truth of this—for now the locutions 
of our Lord were extremely frequent—this happened to me. I 
was in prayer one day—it was the feast of the glorious St. Peter 
—when I saw Christ close by me, or, to speak more correctly, 
felt Him ; for I saw nothing with the eyes of the body, nothing 
with the eyes of the soul. He seemed to me to be close beside 
me; and I saw, too, as I believe, that it was He who was speak- 
ing to me. As I was utterly ignorant that such a vision was 
possible, I was extremely afraid at first, and did nothing but 
weep; however, when I..e spoke to me but one word to reassure 
me, I recovered myself, and was, as usual, calm and comforted, 
without any fear whatever. Jesus Christ seemed to be by my 
side continually, and, as the vision was not imaginary, I saw no 
form; but I had a most distinct feeling that He was always on 
my right hand, a witness of all I did; and never at any time, if 
I was but slightly recollected, or not too much distracted, could 
I be ignorant of His near presence. I went at once to my con- 
fessor in great distress, to tell him of it. He asked in what form | 
I saw our Lord. I told him I saw no form. He then said: 
‘How did you know that it was Christ?’ I replied that I did 
not know how I knew it; but I could not help knowing that 
He was close beside me... there are no words whereby to 
explain—at least, none for us women, who know so little; 
learned men can explain it better. 

“For if I say that I see Him neither with the eyes of the body 
nor those of the soul—because it was not an imaginary vision— 
how is it that I can understand and maintain that He stands 
beside me, and be more certain of it than tf I saw Him? I it 
be supposed that it is as if a person were blind, or in the dark, 


342 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


and therefore unable to see another who is close to him, the 
comparison is not exact. There is a certain likelihood about it, 
however, but not much, because the other senses tell him who is 
blind of that presence: he hears the other speak or move, or he 
touches him; ,but in these visions there is- nothing like this. 
The darkness is not felt ; only He renders Himself present to 
the soul by a certain knowledge of Himself which is more clear _ 
than the sun. I do not mean that we now see either a sun or 
any other brightness, only that there is a light not seen, which 
illumines the understanding, so that the soul may have the fruition 
of so great a good. This vision brings with it great blessings.” * 

(2) In Jmaginary Vision, as in “interior words,” there is 
again no sensorial hallucination. The self sees sharply and 
clearly, it is true: but is perfectly aware that it does so in virtue 
of its most precious organ—“ that inward eye which is the bliss 
of solitude.”2 Imaginary Vision is the spontaneous and auto- 
matic activity of a power which all artists, all imaginative people, 
possess. So far as the machinery employed in it is concerned, 
there is little real difference except in degree between Words- 
worth’s imaginary vision of the “dancing daffodils” and Suso’s 
of the dancing angels, who “ though they leapt very high in the 
dance, did so without any lack of gracefulness.”3 Both are 
admirable examples of “ passive imaginary vision”: though in 
the first case the visionary is aware that the picture seen is 
supplied by memory, whilst in the second it arises spontaneously 
like a dream from the subliminal region, and contains elements 
which may be attributed to love, belief, and direct intuition of 
truth. | 

Such passive imaginary vision—by which I mean spontaneous 
mental pictures at which the self looks, but in the action of 
which it does not participate—takes in the mystics two main 
forms: (@) purely symbolic, (6) personal. 


* St. Teresa, Vida, cap. xxvii. §§ 2-5. 


2 “For oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood, 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude ; 
And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils.” 


Wordswortk, ‘* The Daffodils,” 
$ Leben, cap. vii. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 343 


(a) Inthe symbolic form there is no mental deception: the self 
is aware that it is being shown truth “under an image.” Rulman 
Merswin’s “ Vision of Nine Rocks” is thus described to us as 
being seen by him in a sharp picture, the allegorical meaning of 
which was simultaneously presented to his mind. In Suso’s 
life such symbolic visions abound: he seems to have lived 
always on the verge of such a world of imagination, and to 
have imbibed truth most easily in this form. Thus: “It hap- 
pened one morning that the Servitor saw in a vision that he was 
surrounded by a troop of heavenly spirits. He therefore asked 
one of the most radiant amongst these Princes of the Sky to 
show him how God dwelt in his soul. The angel said to him, 
‘Do but fix your eyes joyously upon yourself, and watch how 
God plays the game of love within your loving soul.’ And he 
looked quickly, and saw that his body in the region of his heart 
was pure and transparent like crystal: and he saw the Divine 
Wisdom peacefully enthroned in the midst of his heart, and she 
was fair to look upon. And by her side was the soul of the 
Servitor, full of heavenly desires; resting lovingly upon the 
bosom of God, Who had embraced it, and pressed it to His 
Heart. And it remained altogether absorbed and inebriated 
with love in the arms of God its well-beloved.” * 

In such a vision as this, we see the mystic’s passion for the 
Absolute, his intuition of Its presence in his soul, combining 
with the constituents of poetic imagination and expressing 
themselves in an allegorical form. It is really a visualized 
poem, inspired by a direct contact with truth. Of the same 
kind are’ many of those great reconstructions of Eternity in 
which mystics and seers of the transcendent and outgoing type 
actualized their profound apprehensions of truth. Insuch cases, 
as Beatrice told Dante when he saw the great vision of the 
River of Light, the thing seen is the shadowy presentation of a 
transcendent Reality which the self is not yet strong enough 
to see. 

‘*E vidi lume in forma di riviera 


fulvide di fulgore, intra due rive 
dipinte di mirabil primavera. 


* Suso, Leben, cap. vi. 


344 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive, 
e d’ ogni parte si mettean nei fiori, 
quasi rubin che oro circonscrive. 
Poi come inebriate dagli odori, 
riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge, 


e, s’una entrava, un’ altra n’ uscia fuori.” 


% * aa . as 


‘*il sol degli occhi miei 
Anco soggiunse: I] fiume, e li topazii 
ch’ entrano ed escono, e il rider dell’ erbe 
son di lor vero ombriferi prefazii. 
Non che da sé sien queste cose acerbe: 
ma €é difetto dalla parte tua, 
che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe.” # 


In the last two lines of this wonderful passage, the whole 
philosophy of vision is expressed. It is an accommodation 
of the supra-sensible to our human disabilities, a symbolic 
reconstruction of reality. This symbolic reconstruction is seen 
as a profoundly significant, vivid, and dramatic dream: and 
since this dream is directly representative of truth, and initiates 
the visionary into the atmosphere of the Eternal, it may well 
claim precedence over that prosaic and perpetual vision which 
we call the “real world.” In it—as in the meaningless dreams 
of our common experience—vision and audition are often com- 
bined. Many of the visions of St. Mechthild of Hackborn are 
of this complex type. Thus—“She saw in the Heart of 
God, as it were a virgin exceeding fair, holding a ring in her 
hand on which was a diamond: with which, incessantly, she 
touched the Heart of God. Moreover, the soul asked why that 
virgin thus touched the Heart of God. And the virgin 
answered, ‘I am Divine Love and this stone signifieth the 
sin of Adam.... As soon as Adam sinned, I introduced 
myself and intercepted the whole of his sin, and by thus 
ceaselessly touching the Heart of God and moving Him to 


* Par. xxx. 61-81 : ‘‘ And I saw light in the form of a river blazing with radiance, 
streaming between banks painted with a marvellous spring. Out of that river issued 
living sparks and settled on the flowers on every side, like rubies set in gold. Then, 
as it were inebriated by the perfume, they plunged again into the wondrous flood, 
and as one entered another issued forth. . . . Then added the Sun of my eyes: The 
river, the topazes that enter and come forth, the smiling flowers, are shadowy fore- 
tastes of their reality. Not that these things are themselves imperfect ; but on thy 
side is the defect, in that thy vision cannot rise so high.” This vision probably owes 
something to Mechthild of Magdeburg’s concept of Deity asa Flowing Light. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 345 


pity, I suffered Him not to rest until the moment when I took 
the Son of God from His Father’s Heart and laid Him in the 
Virgin Mother’s womb.’ ... Another time, she saw how Love, 
under the likeness of a fair Virgin, went round about the 
consistory singing Alone I have made the circuit of heaven, and I 
have walked on the waves of the sea. In these words she under- 
stood how Love had subjected to herself the Omnipotent 
Majesty of God, had inebriated His Unsearchable Wisdom, had 
drawn forth all His most sweet goodness; and, by wholly 
conquering His divine justice and changing it into gentleness 
and mercy, had moved the Lord of all Majesty.”: 

Imaginary vision of this kind is probably far more common 
than is generally supposed : and can exist without any disturb- 
ance of that balance of faculties which is usually recognized as 
“sane.” In many meditative persons it appears, involuntarily, 
at the summit of a train of thought, which it sometimes 
illustrates and sometimes contradicts. The picture may show 
itself faintly against a background of mist; or may start into 
existence sharply focused, well-lighted, and alive. It always 
brings with it a greater impression of reality than can be 
obtained by the more normal operations of the mind. 

(6) The symbolic and artistic character of the visions we 
have been discussing is obvious. There is, however, another 
form of imaginary vision which must be touched on with a 
gentler hand. In this, the imagery seized upon by the sub- 
liminal powers, or placed before the mind by that Somewhat 
Other of which the mystic is always conscious over against 
himself, is at once so vivid, so closely related to the concrete 
beliefs and spiritual passions of the self, and so_ perfectly 
expresses its apprehensions of God, that it is not always 
recognized as symbolic inkind. A simple example of this is 
the vision of Christ at the moment of consecration at Mass, 
experienced by so many Catholic ecstatics.2 Another is the 


* Mechthild of Hackborn, ‘‘ Liber Specialis Gratiae,’’ 1. ii. caps. xvii. and 
XXXV. 

? For instance, the Blessed Angela ot Foligno, who gives in her “ Visions and 
Consolations ” a complete series of such experiences ; ranging from an almost sublime 
apprehension of Divine Beauty (cap. xxxvii. English translation, p. 222) to a concrete 
vision of two eyes shining in the Host (cap. xliii. English translation, p. 230). “I 
did of a certainty behold Him with mine eyes in that sacrament,” she says, ‘* poor, 
suffering, bleeding, crucified, and dead upon the Cross’? (cap. xxxviii. p. 223), 


346 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


celebrated vision in which St. Anthony of Padua embraced the 
Divine Child. St. Teresa is one of the few mystics who have > 


detected the true character of automatisms of this sort: which 
bring with them—like their purer forms, the intellectual visions 


of God—a vivid apprehension of Personality, the conviction of a 
living presence, rather than the knowledge of new facts, 
“Now and then,” she says of her own imaginary visions of 
Christ, “it seemed to me that what I saw was an image: but 
most frequently it was not so. I thought it was Christ Himself, 
judging by the brightness in which He was pleased to show 
Himself. Sometimes the vision was so indistinct, that I 
thought it was an image: but still, not like a picture, however 
well painted, and I have seen a good many pictures. It would 
be absurd to suppose that the one bears any resemblance 
whatever to the other, for they differ as a living person differs 
from his portrait, which, however well drawn, cannot be life-like, 
for it is plain that it is a dead thing.” 

“This vision,” she says in another place, “ passes like a flash 
of lightning ... the word image here employed, does not 
signify a picture placed before the eyes, but a veritable 
living image, which sometimes speaks to the soul and reveals 
great secrets to her.” 2 

It seems, then, that this swift and dazzling vision of 
Divine Personality may represent a true contact of the soul 
with the Absolute Life—a contact immediately referred to 
the image under which the Self is accustomed to think of 
its God. In the case of Christian contemplatives this image 
will obviously be most usually the historical Person of 
Christ, as He is represented in sacred literature and art.3 


‘* Another time I beheld Christ in the consecrated Host as a child. He appeared 
certainly to be a child of twelve years of age, very lordly, as though He held the 
sceptre and the dominion ” (cap. xlii. p. 229). (B. Angelae de Fulginio, “ Visionum 
et Instructionum Liber.”) 

* Vida, cap. xxviii. § 11. 

2 <* Fl Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sextas, cap. ix. 

s “On one of the feasts of St. Paul, while I was at Mass, there stood before me 
the most sacred Humanity as painters represent Him after the resurrection ” (St. 
Teresa, Vida, cap. xxviii. § 4). So too the form assumed by many of the visions or 
Angela of Foligno is obviously due to her familiarity with the frescoed churches of 
Assisi and the Vale of Spoleto. ‘‘ When I did bend my knees upon entering in at the 
door of the church,” she says, ‘‘I immediately beheld a picture of St. Francis lying 
in Christ’s bosom. Then said Christ unto me, ‘Thus closely will I hold thee, 


VOICES AND VISIONS 347 


The life-enhancing quality of such an abrupt apprehension, 
however, the profound sense of reality which it brings, permit 
of its being classed not amongst vivid dreams, but amongst 
those genuine mystic states in which “the immanent God, 
formless, but capable of assuming all forms, expresses Himself 
in vision as He had expressed Himself in words.”t Certainty 
and joy are always felt by the self which experiences it. It 
is as it were a love-letter received by the ardent soul; which 
brings with it the very fragrance of personality, along with the 
sign-manual of the beloved. 

This concrete vision of Christ has the true mystic quality of 
ineffability, appearing to the self under a form of inexpressible 
beauty, illuminated with that unearthly light which is so 
persistently reported as a feature of all transcendent experience. 
The artist’s exalted consciousness of Beauty as a form of Truth 
is here seen operating on the transcendental plane. Thus when 
St. Teresa saw only the Hands of God, she was thrown into 
an ecstasy of adoration by their shining loveliness. “If I were 
to spend many years in devising how to picture to myself any- 
thing so beautiful,” she says of the imaginary vision of Christ, 
“T should never be able, nor even know how, to do it ; for it is 
beyond the scope of any possible imagination here below: the 
whiteness and brilliancy alone are inconceivable. It is not a 
brightness which dazzles, but a delicate whiteness, an infused 
brightness, giving excessive delight to the eyes, which are never 
wearied thereby nor by the visible brightness which enables us 
to see a beauty so divine. It is a light so different from any 
light here below, that the very brightness of the sun we see, in 
comparison with the brightness and light before our eyes, seems 
to be something so obscure that no one would ever wish to open 
his eyes again. ... In short, it is such that no man, however 
gifted he may be, can ever in the whole course of his life arrive 
at any imagination of what it is. God puts it before us so 
instantaneously, that we could not open our eyes in time to see 
it, if it were necessary for us to open them at all. But whether 
our eyes be open or shut, it makes no difference whatever : 


and so much closer, that bodily eyes can neither perceive nor comprehend it’” 
(B. Angelae de Fulginio, of. czt., cap. xx. English translation, p. 165). 

* Delacroix, ‘‘ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” p. 116. 

? Vida, cap. xxviii. § 2. 


348 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


for when our Lord wills, we must see it, whether we will 
or not.”? 

There is another and highly important class of visual 
automatisms: those which I have chosen to call Actzve 
Imaginary Vzistons. Whereas vision of the passive kind is 
the expression of thought, perception, or desire on the part of 
the deeper self: active vision is the expression of a change in 
that self, and generally accompanies some psychological crisis, 
In this vision, which always has a dramatic character, the self 
seems to itself to act, not merely to look on. Such visions may 
possess many of the characters of dream: they may be purely 
symbolic; they may be theologically “realistic.” They may 
entail a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, an 
excursion into fairyland, a wrestling with the Angel in the Way. 
Whatever their outward form, they are always connected with 
inward results. They are the automatic expressions of profound 
subliminal activity: not merely the mmedza by which the self’s 
awareness of the Absolute is strengthened and enriched, but the 
outward and visible signs of its movement towards new levels ot 
consciousness. Hence we are not surprised to find that a 
dynamic vision of this sort often initiates the Unitive Life. Such 
are the imaginary visions reported by St. Francis of Assisi and 
St. Catherine of Siena at the moment of their stigmatization : 
the transverberation of St. Teresa; the heavenly visitor who 
announced to Suso his passage from the “lower school ” to the 
“upper school” of the Holy Spirit.2 But perhaps the most 
picturesque and convincing example of all such dramas of the 
soul, is that which is known in art as the “ Mystic Marriage of 
St. Catherine of Siena.” 

We have already seen that Catherine, who was subject from 
childhood to imaginary visions and interior words, had long been 
conscious otf a voice reiterating the promise of this sacred 
betrothal ; and that on the last day of the Carnival, A.D. 1366, 
it said to her, “I will this day celebrate solemnly with thee the 


* St. Teresa, of. czt., cap. xxvili. §§ 7, 8. Angela of Foligno says of an equivalent 
vision of Christ, ‘‘ His beauty and adornment cannot he described, and so great was 
my joy at the sight of Him, that I do think that it will never fade, and there was 
such certainty with it that I do in no way doubt of the truth thereof” (Angelae de 
Fulginio, of. czt., cap. xlii. English translation, p. 229). 

7 Leben, cap. xxi. 





VOICES AND VISIONS 349 


feast of the betrothal of thy soul, and even as I promised I will 
espouse thee to Myself in faith.’ “Then,” says her legend, 
“whilst the Lord was yet speaking, there appeared the most 
glorious Virgin His Mother, the most blessed John, Evangelist, 
the glorious apostle Paul, and the most holy Dominic, father of 
her order; and with these the prophet David, who had the 
psaltery set to music in his hands; and while he played with 
-most sweet melody the Virgin Mother of God took the right 
hand of Catherine with her most sacred hand, and, holding out 
her fingers towards the Son, besought Him to deign to espouse 
her to Himself in faith, To which graciously consenting the 
Only Begotten of God drew out a ring of gold, which had in its 
circle four pearls enclosing a most beauteous diamond; and 

placing this ring upon the ring finger of Catherine’s right hand 
‘He said, ‘Lo, I espouse thee to Myself, thy Creator and Saviour 
in the faith, which until thou dost celebrate thy eternal nuptials 
with Me in Heaven thou wilt preserve ever without stain. 
Henceforth, my daughter, do manfully and without hesitation 
‘those things which by the ordering of My providence will be put 
‘into thy hands ; for being now armed with the fortitude of the 
faith, thou wilt happily overcome all thy adversaries.’ Then 
the vision disappeared, but that ring ever remained on her 
finger, not indeed to the sight of others, but only to the sight of 
the virgin herself; for she often, albeit with bashfulness, con- 
fessed to me that she always saw that ring on her finger, nor 
was there any time when she did not see it.” ! 

It is not difficult to discern the materials from which this 
vision has been composed. As far as its outward circumstances 
go, it is borrowed intact from the legendary history of St 
Catherine of Alexandria, with which her namesake, the “ dyer’s 


t E. Gardner, ‘‘St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 25. Vita, i. xii. r, 2 (Acta S.S., loc 
cit.). In the ring which she always saw upon her finger, we seem to have an instance 
of true corporeal vision; which finds a curiously exact parallel in the life of St. 
Teresa. ‘*On one occasion when I was holding in my hand the cross of my rosary, 
He took it from me into His own hand. He returned it, but it was then four large 
stones incomparably more precious than diamonds. He said to me that for the 
future that cross would so appear to me always: and so it did. I never saw the wood 
of which it was made, but only the precious stones. They were seen, however, by no 
one else” (Vida, cap. xxix. § 8). This class of experience, says Augustine Baker, 
particularly gifts of roses, rings, and jewels, is ‘‘much to be suspected,” except ix 
** souls of a long-continued sanctity ” (‘* Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iv. cap. iii.) 


350 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


9 


daughter of Italy,” must have been familiar from babyhood.* 
Caterina Benincasa showed a characteristic artistic suggestibility 
and quickness in transforming the stuff of this old story into the 
medium of a profound personal experience: as her contem- 
poraries amongst the Sienese painters took subject, method, and 
composition from the traditional Byzantine source, yet forced 
them to become expressions of their own overpowering 
individuality. The important matter for us, however, is not 
the way in which the second Catherine adapted a traditional 
story to herself, actualized it in her experience: but the fact 
that it was for her the sacramental form under which she became 
acutely and permanently conscious of union with God. Long 
prepared by that growing disposition of her deeper self which 
caused her to hear the reiterated promise of her Beloved, the 
vision when it came was significant, not for its outward circum- 
stances, but for its permanent effect upon her life. In it she 
passed to a fresh level of consciousness; entering upon that 
state of spiritual wedlock, of close and loving identification with 
the interests of Christ, which Richard of St. Victor calls the 
“Third Stage of Ardent Love.” 

Of the same active sort is St. Teresa’s great and celebrated 
vision, or rather experience, of the Transverberation ; in which 
imagery and feeling go side by side in their effort towards 
expressing the anguish of insatiable love. “I saw,” she says, 
“an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form. This I 
am not accustomed to see unless very rarely. Though I have 
visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intel- 
lectual vision, such as I have spoken of before. It was our 
Lord’s will that in this vision I should see the angel in this 
wise. He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful 
—his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who 
seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call 
Cherubim. .. . I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at 
the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to 
me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my 
very entrails ; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out 
also and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The 
pain was so great that it made me moan ; and yet so surpassing 
was the sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to 


* Vide ‘‘ Legenda Aurea,” Nov. xxv. 


VOICES AND VISIONS. 351 


be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than 
God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body 
has its share in it, even a large one. It is a caressing of love 
so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that 
I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may 
think that I am lying.” ! 

Finally it should be added that dynamic vision may assume 
a purely intellectual form ; as in the case of the Blessed Angela 
of Foligno. “Being thus exalted in spirit during the time of 
Lent, therefore,” she says, “I was joined to God in a manner 
other than was customary for me. Methought I was in the 
midst of the Trinity in a manner higher and greater than was 
usual, for greater than usual were the blessings I received, and 
continually were there given unto me gifts full of delight, and 
rejoicing most great and unspeakable. All this was so far 
beyond anything which had heretofore happened unto me that 
verily a divine change took place tn my soul, which neither saint 
nor angel could describe or explain. This divine change, or 
operation, was so profound that no angel or other creature 
howsoever wise, could comprehend it ; wherefore do I say again 
that it seemeth unto me to be evil speaking and blasphemy if I 
do try to tell of it.” 2 


AUTOMATIC SCRIPT 


The rarest of the automatic activities reported td us in connec- 
tion with mysticism is that of “ automatic writing.” This form 
of subliminal action has already been spoken of in an earlier 
chapter3; where two of the most marked examples—Blake 
and Madame Guyon—are discussed. As in the case of voice 
and vision, so this power of automatic composition may and 
does exist in various degrees of intensity: ranging from that 
“inspiration,” that irresistible impulse to write, of which all 
artists are aware, to the extreme form in which the hand of 
the conscious self seems to have become the agent of another 
personality. It is probably present to some extent in all the 
literary work of the great mystics, whose creative power, like 


1 Vida, cap. xxix. §§ 16, 17. 
2 ‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,” cap. xxvii. ‘English translation, p. 186). 
> Pp. 78, 79. 


302 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


that of most poets, is largely dissociated from the control of 
the will and the surface intelligence. 

St. Catherine of Siena, we are told, dictated her great 
Dialogue to her secretaries whilst in the state of ecstasy: which 
probably means a condition of consciousness resembling the 
“trance” of mediums, in which the deeper mind governs the 
tongue. Had she been more accustomed to the use of the pen 
—she did not learn writing until after the beginning of her 
apostolic life—that deeper mind would almost certainly have 
expressed itself by means of automatic script. As it is, in the 
rhythm and exaltation of its periods, the Dialogue bears upon 
it all the marks of true automatic composition of the highest 
type. The very discursiveness of its style, its loose employment 
of metaphor, the strangely mingled intimacy and remoteness of 
its tone, link it with prophetic literature; and are entirely 
characteristic of subliminal energy of a rich type, dissociated 
from the criticism and control of the normal consciousness.? 

So too the writings of Rulman Merswin, if we accept the 
ingenious and interesting theory of his psychic state elaborated 
by M. Jundt,? were almost wholly of this kind. So Blake stated 
on his deathbed that the credit for all his works belonged not 
to himself, but to his “celestial friends ”3: zz., to the inspiration 
of a personality which had access to levels of truth and beauty 
unknown to his surface mind, 

St. Teresa was of much the same opinion in respect of her 
great mystical works: which were, she said, like the speech of 
a parrot repeating, though he cannot understand, the things 
which his master has taught him. There is little doubt that 
her powers of composition—as we might expect in one so apt 
at voice and vision—were largely of the uncontrolled, inspired, 
or “automatic” kind. She wrote most usually after the recep- 
tion of Holy Communion—that is to say, when her mystic 
consciousness was in its most active state—and always swiftly, 
without hesitations or amendments. Ideas and images welled 
up from her rich and active subliminal region too quickly, 
indeed, for her eager, hurrying pen: so that she sometimes 
exclaimed, “Oh, that I could write with many hands, so that 


* On this point I must respectfully differ from Mr. E. Gardner. See his 
‘*St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 354. 
? Supra, p. 224 * Berger, ‘‘ William Blake,” p. 54. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 353 


none were forgotten!”! In Teresa’s unitive state, a slight 
suggestion was enough to change the condition of her con- 
sciousness, place her under the complete domination of her 
deeper mind. Often, she said, when composing the “ Interior 
Castle,” her work reacted upon herself. She would suddenly 
be caught up into the very degree of contemplation which 
she was trying to describe, and continued to write in this 
absorbed or entranced condition, clearly perceiving that her 
pen was guided by a power not her own, and expressed ideas 
unknown to her surface mind, which filled her with astonish- 
ment. 

In the evidence given during the process for St. Teresa’s 
beatification, Maria de San Francisco of Medina, one of her 
early nuns, stated that on entering the saint’s cell whilst she 
was writing this same “Interior Castle” she found her so 
absorbed in contemplation as to be unaware of the external 
world. “If we made a nois2 close to her,” said another, Maria 
del Nacimiento, “she neither ceased to write nor complained of 
being disturbed.” Both these nuns and also Ana de la Encar- 
macion, prioress of Granada, affirmed that she wrote with 
immense speed, never stopping to erase or to correct: being 
anxious, as she said, to “write what the Lord had given her, 
before she forgot it.” They and many others declared that 
when she was thus writing she seemed like another being: 
and that her face, excessively beautiful in expression, shone - 
with an unearthly splendour which afterwards faded away.? 

As for Madame Guyon, whose temperament had in it almost 
as much of the medium as of the mystic, and whose passion for 
quietism and mental passivity left her almost wholly at the 
mercy of subconscious impulses, she exhibits by turns the 
phenomena of clairvoyance, prophecy, telepathy, and automatic 
writing, in bewildering profusion. 

“T was myself surprised,” she says, “at the letters which 
Thou didst cause me to write, and in which I had no part save 
the actual movement of my hand: and it was at this time that 
I received that gift of writing according to the interior mind, 
and not according to my own mind, which I had never known 
before. Also my manner of writing was altogether changed, 


* G. Cunninghame Graham, ‘‘ Santa Teresa,’’ vol. i. p. 202. 
® [bid., pp. 203-4. 
AA 


354 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


and every one was astonished because I wrote with such great 
facility.” * 

Again, “ As soon as I began to read Holy Scripture, I was 
caused to write the passage that I had read; and at once, the 
interpretation of it was given to me. In writing the passage 
I had not the least thought of the interpretation. Yet no sooner 
was it written, than it was given to me to explain it, writing 
with inconceivable swiftness. Before writing, I knew not what 
I was going to write: in writing, I saw that I wrote things 
which I had never known, and during the time of this mani- 
festation it was revealed to me that I had in me treasures of 
knowledge and understanding which I did not know that I 
possessed. ... Thou didst make me write with so great a 
detachment that I was obliged to leave off and begin again as 
Thou didst choose. Thou didst try me in every way: suddenly 
Thou wouldst cause me to write, then at once to cease, and then 
to begin again. When I wrote during the day, I would be 
suddenly interrupted, and often left words half written, and 
afterwards Thou wouldst give me whatever was pleasing to 
Thee. Nothing of that which I wrote was in my mind: my 
mind, in fact, was so wholly at liberty that it seemed a blank 
I was so detached from that which I wrote that it seemed 
foreign to me... . All the faults in my writings come from 
this: that being unaccustomed to the operations of God, I was 
often unfaithful to them, thinking that 1 did well to continue 
writing when I had time, without being moved thereto, because 
I had been told to finish the work. So that it is easy to dis- 
_ tinguish the parts which are fine and sustained, and those which 
have neither savour nor grace. I have left them as they are; so 
that the difference between the Spirit of God and the human or 
natural spirit may be seen. ... I continued always to write, 
and with an inconceivable swiftness, for the hand could hardly 
keep up with the dictating spirit: and during this long work, 
I never changed my method, nor did I make use of any book. 
The scribe could not, however great his diligence, copy in five 
days that which I wrote in a single night. . . . At the beginning 
I made many mistakes, not being yet broken to the operation 
of the spirit of God which caused me to write. For He made 
me cease writing when I had time to write and could have done 


* Vie, pt. il. cap. ii. 


VOICES AND VISIONS 355 


it without inconvenience, and when I felt a great need of sleep, 
then it was He made me write. . . . I will add to all that I have 
been saying on my writings, that a considerable part of the book 
on ‘Judges’ was lost. Being asked to complete it, I rewrote 
the lost portions. Long afterwards, when I was moving house, 
these were found in a place where no one could have imagined 
_ that they would be; and the old and new versions were 
exactly alike—a circumstance which greatly astonished those 
persons of learning and merit who undertook its verifica- 
tion.” 

A far greater and stronger mystic than Madame Guyon, 
Jacob Boehme, was also in his literary composition the more 
or less helpless tool of some power other than his normal sur- 
face-mind. It is clear from his own words concerning it, that 
his first book, the “ Aurora,” produced after the great illumination 
which he received in the year 1610, was no deliberate composi- 
tion, but an example of inspired or automatic script. This 
strange work, full of sayings of a deep yet dazzling darkness 
was condemned by the local tribunal; and Boehme was for- 
bidden to write more. For seven years he obeyed. Then “a 
new motion from on high” seized him, and under the pressure 
of this subliminal impulse—which, characteristically, he feels 
as coming from without not from within—he began to write 
again. 

This second outburst of composition, too, was almost purely 
automatic in type. The transcendental consciousness was 
in command, and Boehme’s §surface-intellect could exert 
but little control. “ Art,’ he says of it himself, “has not 
wrote here, neither was there any time to consider how to 
set it punctually down, according to the Understanding of 
the Letters, but all was ordered according to the Direction of 
the Spirit, which often went in haste, so that in many words 
Letters may be wanting, and in some Places a Capital Letter 
for a Word; so that the Penman’s Hand, by reason he was not 
accustomed to it, did often shake. And though I could have 
wrote in a more accurate, fair and plain Manner, yet the 
Reason was this, that the burning Fire often forced forward 


* Vie, pt. ii. cap. xxi. Those who wist. to compare this vivid subjective account 
of automatic writing with modern attested instances may consult Myers, ‘‘ Human 
Personality,” and Oliver Lodge, ‘‘'The Survival of Man.” 


356 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


with Speed, and the Hand and Pen must hasten directly after 
it; for it comes and goes as a sudden Shower.” ! 

No description could give more vividly than this the spon- 
taneous and uncontrollable character of these automatic states ; 
the welling-up of new knowledge, the rapid formation of 
sentences: so quick, that the hand of the subject can hardly 
keep pace with that “burning Fire,’ the travail of his inner 
mind. As in vision, so here, the contents of that inner mind, 
its hoarded memories, will influence the form of the message: 
and hence, in Boehme’s works, the prevalence of that obscure 
Kabalistic and Alchemical imagery which baffles even his 
most eager readers, and which is the result, of an earlier 
acquaintance with the works of Paracelsus, Weigel, and 
Sebastian Franck.2. Such language, however, no more dis- 
credits the “ power behind the pen,” than the form under which 
St. Catherine of Siena apprehended the mystic marriage dis- 
credits her attainment of the unitive life. In the fruit of such 
automatic travail, such a “wrestling with the Angel in the way,” 
the mystic offers to our common humanity the chalice of the 
Spirit of Life. We may recognize the origins of the ornament 
upon the chalice: but we cannot justly charge him with counter- 
feiting the Wine. 

We have been dealing throughout this section with means 
rather than with ends: means snatched at by the struggling self 
which has not yet wholly shaken itself free from “image,” in 
its efforts to seize somehow—actualize, enjoy, and adore—that 
Absolute which is the sum of its desires. No one will ever 
approach an understanding of this phase of the mystical con- 
sciousness, who brings to it either a contempt for the minds 
which could thus simply and sometimes childishly objectivize 
the Divine, or a superstitious reverence for the image, apart 
from the formless Reality at which it hints. Between these two 
extremes lies our hope of grasping the true place of automatisms 
on the Mystic Way: of seeing in them instances of the adapta- 
tion of those means by which we obtain consciousness of the 
phenomenal world, to an apprehension of that other world 
whose attainment is humanity’s sublimest end. 


* Works of Jacob Boehme (English translation, vol. i. p. xiv.). 
2 See E. Boutroux, ‘ [ce Philosophe Allemand, Jacob Boehme.” 


on 


CHAPTER VI 


INTROVERSION. ParrI: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 


_ 

Introversion is the characteristic mystic art—Its development accompanies organi 
growth—It is susceptible of education—The value of tradition—The training of will 
and attention—Contemplation the only real way of perceiving anything—Its method 
described—An experiment—Introversion—Ecstasythe two aspects of contempla- 
tive consciousness—The ground of the soul—Philosophic contemplation—The 
Degrees of Orison—their nature—The end of contemplation—Hilton—Naked 
orison—All ‘‘stages” or degrees of orison arbitrary and diagrammatic—But some 
division essential to description—Three stages—Recollection, Quiet, Contemplation— 
Orison grows with the growing self—disciplines the mind, will and heart—St. Teresa’s 
degrees of orison—It is a progress in love—a retreat from circumference to centre— 
Its end is union—Recollection—a difficult process—Boehme—Meditation—its char- 
acteristics—it develops into Recollection—A spiritual gymnastic—St. Teresa—Quiet 
—its characteristics—largely inexpressible—Suspension of thought—Its development 
from Recollection—It is a state of humility—Its nature described—Two aspects of 
Quiet: positive and negative—Eckhart—The Epistle of Private Counsel—St. Teresa 
—Quiet and Quietism—The ‘‘ danger-zone ’’ of introversion— Ruysbroeck on Quietism 
—its evils—It is a perversion of truth—Molinos—Von Hiigel—The distinguishing 
mark of true Quiet—Madame Guyon—Quiet is a transitional state 


illumination, we have been analysing and considering a 

process of organic development; an evolution of person- 
ality. This may be called—indifferently—either a movement 
, of consciousness towards higher levels, or a remaking of con- 
sciousness consequent on the emergence and growth of a factor 
which is dormant in ordinary man, but destined to be supreme 
in the full-grown mystic type. We have seen the awakening 
of this factor—this spark of the soul—with its innate capacity 
for apprehending the Absolute. We have seen it attack and 
conquer the old sense-fed and self-centred life of the normal 
self, and introduce it into a new universe, lit up by the Un- 


created Light. These were the events which, taken together, 
357 


[:: our study of the First Mystic Life, its purification and 


308 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


constituted the “First Mystic Life” ; a complete round upon 
the spiral road which leads from man to God. 

What we have been looking at, then, is a life-process, the 
establishment of a certain harmony between the self and 
Reality: and we have discussed this life-process rather as if 
it contained no elements which were not referable to natural 
and spontaneous growth, to the involuntary adjustments of the 
organism to that extended or transcendental universe of which 
it gradually becomes aware. 

But side by side with this organic growth goes a specific 
kind of activity which is characteristic of the mystic: a form 
under which his consciousness works best, and his awareness 
of the Infinite is enriched and defined. Already once or twice 
we have been in the presence of this activity, have been obliged 
to take its influence into account: as, were we studying other 
artistic types, we could not leave the medium in which they 
work wholly on one side. 

Contemplation is the mystic’s medium. It is to him that 
which harmony is to the musician,.form and colour to the 
artist, measure to the poet: the vehicle by which he can best 
apprehend the Good and Beautiful, enter into communion with 
the Real. As “voice” or “vision” is the way in which his 
transcendental consciousness presents its discoveries to the 
surface-mind, so contemplation is the way in which it makes 
those discoveries, perceives the supra-sensible. The growth of 
his effective genius, therefore, is connected with his growth in 
this art: and that growth is largely conditioned by education. 

The painter, however great his natural powers may be, can 
hardly dispense with some technical training ; the musician is 
wise if he acquaint himself at least with the elements of 
counterpoint. So too the mystic. It is true that he some- 
times seems to spring abruptly to the heights, to be caught 
into ecstasy without previous preparation: as a poet may 
startle the world by a sudden masterpiece. But unless they 
be backed by discipline, these sudden and isolated flashes of 
inspiration will not long avail for the production of great works. 
“Ordina quest’ amore, o tu che m’ami” is the one imperative 
demand made by Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, by every aspect 
of Reality, upon the human soul. Lover and philosopher, saint, 
artist, and scientist, must alike obey or fail. 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTIQ@N AND QUIET 359 


Transcendental genius, then, obeys\the Jaws which govern 
al] other forms of genius, in being susceptible of culture: and, 
indeed, cannot develop its full powers’ without an educative 
process of some kind. This strange art of contemplation, which 
the mystic tends naturally to practise during the whole of his 
career—-which develops step by step with his visiongand his 
love—demands of the self which undertakes it the «| ard 
dull work, the same slow training of the will, which “ ‘By a 
all supreme achievement, and is the price of all true liberty. It 
is the want of such training—such “supersensual dril!”—which 
is responsible for the mass of vague, ineffectual, and sometimes 
harmful mysticism which has always existed : the dilute cosmic 
emotion and limp spirituality which hangs, as it were, on the 
skirts of the true seekers of the Absolute and brings discredit 
upon their science. 

In this, as in all the other eo lesser arts which have been 
developed by the race, education consists largely in a humble 
willingness to submit to the discipline, and profit by the lessons, 
of the past. Tradition runs side by side with experience; the 
past collaborates with the present. Each new and eager soul 
rushing out towards the only end of Love passes on its way the 
landmarks left by others upon the pathway to Reality. If it be 
wise it observes them: and finds in them rather helps towards 
attainment than hindrances to that freedom which is of the: 
essence of the mystic act. This act, it is true, is in the last 
resort a solitary affair, “the flight of the Alone to the Alone.” 
There is nothing of “social Christianity” in that supreme 
adventure whereby “God and the soul are made one thing.” 
At the same time, here as elsewhere, man cannot safely divorce 
his own personal history from that of the race. The best and 
truest experience does not come to the eccentric and individual 
pilgrim whose intuitions are his only law: but rather to him 
who submits personal intuition to the guidance afforded by the 
general history of the mystic type. Those who refuse this 
guidance do as a fact expose themselves to all the dangers 
which crowd about the individualist: from heresy at one end 
of the scale to madness at the other. 

Vae Soli! Nowhere more clearly than in the history of 
mysticism do we observe the essential solidarity of mankind: the 
penalty paid by those who will not acknowledge it. 






360 AN INTROD#CTION TO MYSTICISM , 


Now the educationf which tradition has ever prescribed 
for the mystic, consists in the gradual development) of an 
extraordinary faculty of concentration, a power of spiritual 
attentiom. It is not enough that he should naturally be 
“aware, of the Absolute,” unless he be able to contemplate 
it: jusjgas the mere possession of eyesight or hearing, how- 
eves. ke needs to be supplemented by trained powers of 
gs and reception if we are really to appreciate—see 
or hear té any purpose—the masterpieces of Music or of 
Art. Mare, Nature herself reveals little of her secret to 
| those whe only look and listen with the outward ear and 
eye. The condition of all valid seeing and hearing upon every 
plane of consciousness lies not in the sharpening of the senses, 
but in a peculiar attitude of the whole personality: in a self- 
forgetting aff€ntiveness, a profound concentration, a self- 
merging, which operates a real communion between the seer 
and the seen: in a word in Covztemp/ation. 

Contemplation, then, is a power which we may—and often 
must—apply to the perception, not only of Divine Reality, but 
of anything. It is the condition under which all things give 
up to us the secret of their life. All artists are of necessity in 
some measure contemplative. “Innocence of eye” is little 
else than this: and only by its means can they see truly those 
things which they desire to represent. I invite those to whom 
these statements seem a compound of cheap psychology and 
cheaper metaphysics to clear their minds of prejudice and 
submit this matter to an experimental test. If they will be 
patient and honest—and unless they belong to that minority 
which is temperamentally incapable of the simplest contem- 
plative act—they will emerge from the experiment possessed 
of a little new knowledge as to the nature of the relation 
between the human mind and the outer world. 

All that is asked is that we shall look for a little time, in a 
special and undivided manner, at some simple, concrete, and 
external thing. 

This object of our contemplation may be almost anything 
we please: a picture, a statue, a tree, a distant hillside, a 
growing plant, running water, little living things. We need not, 
with Kant, go to the starry heavens. “A little thing the 
quantity of an hazel nut” will do for us, as it did for Lady 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 361 


Julian long ago.t Remember, it is a practical experiment on 
which we are set ; not an opportunity of pretty and pantheistic 
meditation. } 

Look, then, at this thing which you have chosen. Wilfully 
refuse the messages which countless other aspects of the world 
are sending, and so concentrate your whole attention on 
this one act of sight that all other objects are excluded from 
the conscious field. Do not think, but as it were pour out your 
personality towards it: let your soul be in your eyes. Almost 
at once, this new method of perception will reveal unsuspected 
qualities in the external world. First, you will perceive about 
you a strange and deepening quietness. Next, you will become 
aware of a heightened significance, an intensified existence in 
the thing at which you look. As you, with all your conscious- 
ness, lean out towards it, an answering current will meet yours, 
It seems as though the barrier between its life and your own, 
between subject and object, had melted away. You are 
merged with it, in an act of true communion: and you know 
the secret of its being deeply and unforgettably, yet in a way 
which you can never hope to express. 

Seen thus, a thistle has celestial qualities: a speckled hen a 
touch of the sublime. Our greater comrades, the trees, the 
clouds, the rivers, initiate us into mighty secrets, flame out at 
us “like shining from shook foil.” The “eye which looks upon 
Eternity” has been given its opportunity. We have been 
immersed for a moment in the “life of the All”: a deep and 
peaceful love unites us with the substance of all things: a 
“Mystic Marriage” has taken place between the mind and 
some aspect of the external world. Cor ad cor loquitur: Life 
has spoken to life, but not to the surface-intelligence. That 
surface-intelligence knows only that the message was true and 
beautiful: no more. 

The price of this experience has been a stilling of that 
surface-mind, a calling in of all our scattered interests: an 
entire giving of ourselves to this one activity, without self-con- 
Sciousness, without reflective thought. To reflect is always to 
distort: our minds are not good mirrors. The contemplative 
is contented to absorb and be absorbed: and by this humble 
access he attains to a plane of knowledge which no intellectual 
process can come near. 


* “ Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. v. 


362 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Now this simple experiment exercises on a small scale, and 
in regard to visible Nature, the faculty by which the mystic 
apprehends Invisible Reality—eriters into communion with the — 
Absolute. It is one thing, of course, to see truthfully for an_ 
instant the flower in the crannied wall: another, to bear the full 
blaze of “eternal Truth, true Love and loved Eternity.” Yet 
both according to their measure are functions of the inward 
eye operating in the “suspension of the mind.” 

This humble receptiveness, this still and steady gazing, in 
which emotion, will, and thought are lost and fused, is the 
secret of the great contemplative on fire with love of that which 
he has been allowed to see. But whilst the contemplation of | 
Nature entails an outgoing towards somewhat indubitably 
external to us: the contemplation of spirit, as it seems to those 
who practise it, more often entails an ingoing or “introversion ” 
of our faculties; a “journey towards the centre.” The King- 
dom of God, they say, is within you: seek it, then, in the 
most secret habitations of the soul. 

The mystic, then, must learn so to concentrate all his. 
faculties, his very self, upon the invisible and intangible, that | 
all visible things are forgot: to bring it so sharply into focus 
that everything else is blurred. He must call in his scattered 
faculties by a deliberate exercise of the will, empty his mind of. 
its swarm of images, its riot of thought. In mystical language 
he must “sink into his nothingness”: into that blank abiding 
place where busy, clever Reason cannot come. The whole of. 
this process, this gathering up and turning “inwards” of the. 
powers of the self, this gazing into the ground of the soul, is 
that which is called /uztroversion. : 

Introversion is an art which can be acquired, as gradually | 
and as certainly, by the born mystic, as the art of piano-playing | 
can be acquired by the born musician. In both cases it is the | 
genius of the artist which makes his use of the instrument 
effective : but it is also his education in the use of the instrument : 
which enables that genius to express itself in an adequate way. | 
Such mystical education, of course, presumes a something that | 
can be educated: the “New Birth,” the awakening of the | 
deeper self, must have taken place before it can begin. It is | 
a psychological process, and obeys psychological laws: there is | 
in it no element of the unexpected or the supernatural. 





i 
j 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 363 


In its early stages the practice of introversion is voluntary, 
difficult, and deliberate ; as are the early stages of learning to 
read or write. But as reading or writing finally becomes auto- 
matic, so as the mystic’s training in introversion proceeds, 
habits are formed: and those contemplative powers which he is 
educating establish themselves amongst his normal faculties. 
Sometimes they wholly dominate these faculties, escape the 
control of the will, and appear spontaneously ; seizing upon the 
conscious field. Such violent and involuntary invasions of 
the transcendental powers, when they utterly swamp the surface- 
consciousness and the subject is therefore cut off from his 
ordinary “external world,” constitute the typical experience of 
rapture or ecstasy. It is under the expansive formule of such 
abrupt ecstatic perception, “ not by gradual steps, but by sudden 
ecstatic flights soaring aloft to the glorious things on high,” * 
that the mystical consciousness of Divine Transcendence is 
most clearly expressed. Those wide, exalted apprehensions of 
the Godhead which we owe to the mystics have been obtained, 
not by industrious meditation, but by “a transcending of all 
creatures, a perfect going forth from oneself: by standing in an 
ecstasy of mind.”2 Hence the experiences peculiar to these 
ecstatic states have a great value for the student of mystical 
science. It will be our duty to consider them in some detail in 
a later section of this book. 

The normal and deliberate practice of introversion, on the 
contrary, is tightly bound up with the sense of Divine Imma- 
nence. Its emphasis is on the indwelling God Who may be 
found “by a journey towards the centre”: on the conviction 
indeed that “angels and archangels are with us, but He is more 
truly our own who is not only wth us but 2” us.” 3 

Contemplation—taking that term in its widest sense, as 
embracing the whole mystic art—establishes communion be- 
tween the soul and the Absolute by way of these two comple- 
mentary modes of apprehending that which is One: A. The 
usually uncontrollable, definitely outgoing, ecstatic experience, 
the attainment of Pure Being, or “flight to God.” B, The 


* St. Bernard, ‘* De Consideratione,”’ bk. v. cap. iii. 

® ‘¢ De Imitatione Christi,” 1. iii. cap. xxxi. 

3 St. Bernard, of. czt., bk. v. cap. v. So Lady Julian, ‘* We are all in Him en- 
closed and He is enclosed in us” (‘* Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. Ivii.). 


364 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


ore controllable ingoing experience, the breaking down of the 
barrier between the surface-self and those deeper levels of 
personality where God is met and known “in our nothingness,” 
and a mysterious fusion of divine and human life takes place, 
The one, says the Christian mystic, is the “ going forth to the 
Father”; the other is the “marriage with the Son.” Both are 
operated by the Indwelling Spirit, the “spark of the soul.” Yet 
it is probable, in spite of the spatial language which the mystics 
always use concerning them, that these two experiences, in 
their most sublime forms, are but opposite aspects of one whole; 
the complementary terms of a higher synthesis beyond our span, 
In that consummation of love which Ruysbroeck has called 
“the peace of the summits” they meet: then distinctions 
between inward and outward, near and far, cease to have any 
meaning, in “the dim silence where lovers lose themselves.” 
“To mount to God,” says a tract attributed to Albert the 
Great, “is to enter into one’s self. For he who inwardly 
entereth and intimately penetrateth into himself, gets above 
and beyond himself and truly mounts up to God.” 

Says Tauler of this ineffable meeting-place, which is to the 
intellect an emptiness, and to the heart a fulfilment of all desire, 
“All there is so still and mysterious and so desolate: for there 
is nothing there but God only, and nothing strange. . . . This 
Wilderness is the Quiet Desert of the Godhead, into which He 
leads all who are to receive this inspiration of God, now or in’ 
Eternity.”2 From this “quiet desert,” this still plane of being, 
so near to her though she is far from it, the normal self is 
separated by all the “unquiet desert” of sensual existence. 
Yet it stretches through and in her, the stuff of Reality, the 
very Ground of her being, since it is, in Julian’s words, “the 
Substance of all that is”: linking that being at once with 
the universe and with God. “God is near us, but we are far 
from Him, God is within, we are without, God is at home, we 
are in the far country,” said Meister Eckhart, struggling to 
express the nature of this “intelligible where.”3 Clearly, if the 
self is ever to become aware of it, definite work must be under-: 
taken, definite powers of perception must be trained: and the 





| 
* **De Adhaerando Deo,” cap. vii. 
? Third Instruction (‘The Inner Way,” p. 323). 
3 Eckhart, Pred. Ixix. 


[INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 365 


consciousness which has been evolved to meet the exigencies 
of the World of Becoming must be initiated into that World of 
Being from which it came forth. 

Plato long ago defined the necessity of such a perception, 
and the nature of that art of contemplation by which the soul 
can feed upon the Real, when he said in one of his most purely 
mystical passages, “When the soul returns into itself and reflects, 
it passes into .. . the region of that which is pure and ever- 
lasting, immortal and unchangeable : and, feeling itself kindred 
thereto, it dwells there under its own control, and has rest from 
its wanderings.”* The “contemplation” of Plato and of the 
Platonic Schools generally, however, is a purely intellectual 
activity : with him the head and not the heart is the meeting- 
place between man and the Real. “ Anciently,” says Augustine 
Baker, “there was a certain kind of false contemplation, which 
we may call philosophical, practised by some learned heathens 
of old, and imitated by some in these days, which hath for its 
last and best end only the perfection of knowledge and a 
delightful complacency in it... . To this rank of philosophical 
contemplations may be referred those scholastic wits which 
spend much time in the study and subtle examination of the 
mysteries of faith, and have not for their end the increasing 
of divine love in their hearts.” 2 

We cannot long read the works of the mystics without 
coming across descriptions—often first-hand descriptions of 
great psychological interest—of the processes through which 
the self must pass, the discipline which it must undertake, in 
the course of acquiring the art of contemplation. Most of these 
descriptions differ as to detail ; as to the divisions adopted, the 
emotions experienced, the number of “degrees” through which | 
the subject passes, from the first painful attempt to gather up 
its faculties to the supreme point at which it feels itself to be 
“lost in God.” In each there is that quality of uniqueness 
which is inherent in every expression of life: in each the 
temperamental bias and analytical powers of the writer have 
exerted a further modifying influence. All, however, describe 
a connected experience, the progressive concentration of the 
entire self under the spur of love upon the contemplation of 
transcendental reality. As the Mystic Way involves transcen- 


t Phaedo, 79 c. 2 «Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iil. § iv. cap. i, 





366 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


dence of character, the movement of the whole man to highe! 
levels of vitality, his attainment of freedom; so the ascent o} 
the ladder of contemplation involves such a transcendence, o1 
movement to high levels of liberty, of his perceptive powers 

The steps of the ladder, the substance of the progressive 
exercises undertaken by the developing self, its education in 
the art of contemplation, are called, in technical terms, the 
“degrees of orison” ; or sometimes, by an unfortunate loosenes: 
of the English language, the “degrees of prayer.” “ Prayer, 
as understood of the multitude, with all its implications of con: 
ventional piety, formality, detailed petition—a definite something 
asked for, and a definite duty done, by means of extemporary 
or traditional allocutions addressed to the anthropomorphic Deity 
of popular religion—does not really suggest the nature of those 
supersensual activities which the mystics mean to express in 
their use of this term. 

“Orison” has nothing in common with petition. It is not 
articulate ; it has no forms. “It is,” says the “Mirror of St. 
Edmund,” “ naught else but yearning of soul.”? On the psycho- 
logical side it is a steady discipline imposed upon the mystic’s 
rich subliminal mind, a slow preparation of the channels in 
which that deeper consciousness is to flow : a reducing to some 
sort of order, a making effective for life, of those involuntary 
states of passivity, rapture, and intuition which are the 
characteristic ways in which an uncontrolled, uncultivated 
genius for the Absolute breaks out. To the subject himself, 
however, it seems rather a free and mutual act of love, a 
strange splendid ‘‘supernatural” intercourse between the soul 
and the divine, or some aspect of the divine : a wordless “con- 
» versation in Heaven.”? In some of its degrees it is a placid, 
“ trustful waiting upon messages from without. In others, it is 
an inarticulate communion, a wordless rapture, a silent gazing 
upon God. The mystics have exhausted all the resources of all 


* Cap. xvii. 

* “*T discover all truths in the interior of my soul,” says Antoinette Bourignan, 
“* especially when I am recollected in my solitude ina forgetfulness of all Things. 
Then my spirit communicates with Another Spirit, and they entertain one another as 
two friends who converse about serious matters. And this conversation is so sweet 
that I have sometimes passed a whole day and a night in it without interruption 
or standing in need of meat or drink” (MacEwen, ‘‘ Antoinette Bourignan, Quietist,” 
p- 109). 





INTROVERSION : RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 367 


tongues in their efforts to tell us of the rewards which await 
those who will undertake this most sublime and difficult 
of arts. 

As we come to know our friends better by having inter- 
course with them, so by this deliberate intercourse the self 
enters more and more deeply into the Heart of Reality. 
Climbing like Dante step by step up the ladder of contempla- 
tion, it comes at last to the Empyrean, “ivi é perfetta, matura 
ed intera ciascuna disianza.”! “Journeys end in lovers meet- 
ing.” The true end of orison, like the true end of that 
mysticism which it cultivates, is the supreme meeting between 
Lover and Beloved, between God and the soul. Its method 
is the method of the mystic life, transcendence: a gradual 
approximation of the contemplative self to reality : the pro- 
duction within it of those conditions in which union can take 
place. This entails a concentration, a turning inwards, of all 
those faculties which the normal self has been accustomed to 
turn outwards, and fritter upon the manifold illusions of daily 
life. It means, during the hours of introversion, a retreat from 
and refusal of the Many, in order that the mind may be able to 
apprehend the One. “ Behold,” says Boehme, “ if thou desirest 
to see God’s Light in thy Soul, and be divinely illuminated and 
conducted, this is the short way that thou art to take ; not 
to let the Eye of thy Spirit enter into Matter or fill itself with 
any Thing whatever, either in Heaven or Earth, but to let 
it enter by a naked faith into the Light of the Majesty.” 2 

“What this opening of the spiritual eye is,” says Hilton, 
“the greatest scholar on earth cannot imagine by his wit, nor 
show fully by his tongue ; for it cannot be gotten by study, nor 
by man’s industry alone, but principally by grace of the Holy 
Ghost and with human industry. I am afraid to speak any- 
‘thing of it, for methinketh that I cannot, it passeth my assay, 
and my lips are unclean. Nevertheless, because it seems to me 
that love asketh, yea, love biddeth that I should, therefore shall 
I say a little more of it, as I hope love teacheth. This opening 
of the spiritual eye is that lightsome darkness and rich nought 
that I spake of before, and it may be called purity of spirit and 
spiritual rest, inward stillness and peace of conscience, highness 
of thought and loneliness of soul, a lively feeling of grace and 


* Par. xxii. 64. ® “ Dialogues of the Supersensual Life,” p. 66. 


368 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM ri 


privity of heart, the watchful sleep of the spouse and tasting o, 
heavenly savour, burning in love and shining in light, the entry 
of Contemplation and reforming in feeling . . . these be divers 
in show of words, yet are they all one in meaning and verity.” ! 

“Human industry,” says Hilton here, must be joined to 
“srace.” If the spiritual eye is to be opened work must be 
done. So long as the eye which looks upon Time “fills itself 
with things” and usurps the conscious field, that spiritual 
eye which “looks upon Eternity” can hardly act at all: and 
this eye must not only be opened, it must be trained, so that it 
may endure to gaze steadfastly at the Uncreated Light. This 
training and purging of the transcendental sight is described 
under many images ; “diverse in show of words, one in mean- 
ing and verity.” Its essence is a progressive cleansing of the 
mirror, a progressive self-emptying of all that is not real, the 
attainment of that unified state of consciousness which will 
permit a pure, imageless apprehension of the final Reality 
which “hath no image” to be received by the self. “Naked 
orison,” “emptiness,” “nothingness,” “entire surrender,” “ peace- 
ful love in life naughted,” say the mystics again and again. 
Where apprehension of the divine comes by way of vision 
or audition, this is but a concession to human weakness ; a 
sign, they think, that the senses are not quite killed. It is 
a translation of the true tongue of angels into a dialect that 
they can understand. A steady abolition of sense imagery, a 
cutting off of all possible sources of illusion, all possible 
encouragements of selfhood and pride—the most fertile of all 
sources of deception—this is the condition of pure sight ; and 
the “degrees of orison,” the “steep stairs of love” which they 
climb so painfully, are based upon this necessity. 

Now the terms used by individual mystics, the divisions 
which they adopt in describing the self’s progress in this art of 
orison, are bewildering in their variety. Here, more than 
elsewhere, has the mania for classification obsessed them. 
We find, too, when we come to compare them one with 
another, that the language which they employ is not always 
so exact as it seems: that they do not all use the traditional 
terms in the same sense. Sometimes by the word “ contempla- 
tion” they intend to describe the whole process of intro- 


* Hilton, ‘‘ The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. x, 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 369 


version : sometimes they reserve it for the “orison of union,” 
sometimes identify it with ecstasy. It has been pointed out 
by Delacroix that even St. Teresa’s classification of her own 
states is far from lucid, and varies in each of her principal 
works. Thus in the “Life” she appears to treat Recollection 
and Quiet as synonymous, whilst in “ The Way of Perfection ” 
these conditions are sharply differentiated. In “The Interior 
Castle” she adopts an entirely different system; the orison of 
quiet being there called “tasting of God.”2 Finally, Augustine 
Baker, in treating of the “ Prayer of Interior Silence and Quiet,” 
insists that by the term “Quiet” St. Teresa did not mean this at 
all, but a form of “ supernatural contemplation.” 3 

Thus we are gradually forced to the conclusion that the 
so-called “degrees of orison” so neatly tabulated by ascetic © 
writers are largely artificial and symbolic: that the process 
which they profess to describe is really, like life itself, one and 
continuous—not a stairway but a slope—and the parts into 
which they break it up are diagrammatic. Nearly every mystic 
makes these breaks in a different place, though continuing to 
use the language of his predecessors. In his efforts towards self- 
analysis he divides and subdivides, combines and differentiates 
his individual moods. Hence the confusion of mind which falls 
upon those who try to harmonize different systems of contempla- 
tion: to identify St. Teresa’s “Four Degrees” 4 with Hugh of 
St. Victor’s other four, and with Richard of St. Victor’s “ four 
steps of ardent love”’:® or to accommodate upon this diagram 
Hilton’s simple and poetic “three steps of contemplation ”7— 
Knowing; Loving; and Knowing and Loving—where the 
dreamer rather than the map-maker speaks. Such fine shades, 
says Augustine Baker in this connexion, are “nicely dis- 
tinguished ” by the author “rather out ofa particular experience 


* «Ftudes sur le Mysticisme,” p. 18. 

2 Vida, cap. xiv. ; ‘Camino de Perfeccion,” cap. xxxi. 3 ‘* El Castillo Interior,”’ 
Moradas Cuartas, cap. ii. 

3 ** Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § ii. cap. vii. 

4 Meditation, Quiet, a nameless ‘‘ intermediate ” degree, and the Orison of Union 
(Vida, cap. xi.). i 

5 Meditation, Soliloquy, Consideration, Rapture (Hugh of St. Victor, ‘‘ De 
Contemplatione ”’). 

® «* De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Charitatis.” Vide supra, p. 165. 

7 ** The Scale of Perfection,” bk. i. caps. iv. to viii. 

BB 


370 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


of the effects passing in his own soul, which perhaps are not the 
same in all” than for any more general reason. ! 

Some diagram, however, some set scheme, the writer on 
_ introversion must have, if he is to describe with lucidity the 
_ development of the contemplative consciousness: and so long 
as the methodological nature of this diagram is kept in mind, 
there can be little objection to the use of it. I propose then 
to examine under three divisions that continuous and orderly 
stream of experience, that process of incessant change, by which 
the mystical consciousness is turned from visible to invisible 
things. We will give to these three divisions names which will 
be familiar to all readers of ascetic literature: Recollection, 
Quiet, and Contemplation. Each of these three parts of the 
introversive experience may be discerned in embryo in that little 
experiment at which the reader has been invited to assist: the 
act of concentration, the silence, the new perception which 
results. Each has a characteristic beginning which links it with 
its predecessor, and a characteristic end which shades off into 
the next state. Thus Recollection begins in Meditation and 
develops into the “ Orison of Inward Silence,” which again melts 
into the true “Quiet.” “Quiet” as it becomes deeper passes 
into Infused Contemplation: and this grows through Contem- 
plation proper to that Orison of Passive Union which is the 
highest of the non-ecstatic introversive states. Merely to state 
the fact thus is to remind ourselves how smoothly continuous is 
this life-process of the soul. 

It is the object of orison, as it is the object of all education, 
to discipline and develop certain growing faculties. In this case, 
the faculties are those of the “transcendental self,” the “new 
man ”—all those powers which we associate with the “spiritual 
consciousness.” The “Sons of God,” however, like the sons of 
men, begin as babies; and their first lessons must not be 
too hard. Therefore the educative process conforms to and 
takes advantage of every step of the natural process of growth: 
as we, in the education of our children, make the natural order 
in which their faculties develop the basis of our scheme of culti- 
vation. Recollection, Quiet, and Contemplation, then, answer 
to the order in which the mysti¢’s powers unfold. Roughly 
speaking, we shall find that the form of spiritual attention which 


* “ Holy Wisdom,” Joc. ctt., § ii. cap. i. 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 371 


is called “Meditative” or “ Recollective” goes side by side 
with the Purification of the Seif; that “Quiet” tends to be 
characteristic of Illumination: that Contemplation—at any rate 
in its higher forms—is most constantly experienced by those 
who have attained, or nearly attained, the Unitive Way. At the 
same time, just as the self in its “first mystic life” before 
it has passed through the dark night of the will, often seems to 
run through the whole gamut of spiritual states, and attain that 
oneness with the Absolute which it seeks—though as a fact it 
has not yet reached those higher levels of consciousness on 
which true and permanent union takes ‘place—so too in its 
orison. At any point in its career it may experience for brief 
periods that imageless and overpowering sense of identity with 
the Absolute Life—that loving and exalted absorption in — 
God—which is called “passive union” and anticipates the con- . 
sciousness which is characteristic of the deified life. Over and 
over again in its “prayerful process” it recapitulates in little 
the whole great process of its life. It runs up for an instant to 
levels where it is not yet strong enough to dwell. Therefore we 
must not be too strict in our identification of the grades of edu- 
cation with the stages of growth. 

This education, rightly understood, is one coherent process : 
it consists in a steady and voluntary surrender of the awakened 
consciousness, its feeling, thought, and will, to the play of those 
transcendental influences, that inflowing vitality, which it con- 
ceives of as divine. In the preparative process of Recollec- 
tion, the unruly mind is brought into harmony. In “ Quiet ” 
the eager will is silenced, the “wheel of imagination ” is 
stilled. In Contemplation, the heart at last comes to its own— 
Cor ad cor loguitur. In their simplest, crudest forms, these 
three acts are the deliberate concentration upon, the meek 
resting in, the joyous communing with, the ineffable Object 
of man’s quest. They involve a progressive concentration of the 
mystic’s powers, a gradual handing over of the reins from 
the surface intelligence to the deeper mind, a progressive. 
reception of the inflowing Spirit of God. In Recollection 
the surface-mind still holds, so to speak, the leading strings: 
but in “ Quiet” it surrenders them wholly, allowing conscious- 
ness to sink into that “blissful silence in which God works 
and speaks.” This act of surrender, this deliberate nega- 


372 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


tion of thought, is an essential preliminary of the contemplative 
state. “Lovers put out the candles and draw the curtains when 
they wish to see the god and the goddess; and in the higher 
communion the night of thought is the light of perception.” * 

The education of the self in the different degrees of orison 
has been compared by St. Teresa, in a celebrated passage in 
her Life, to four ways of watering the garden of the soul so 
- that it may bring forth its flowers and fruits.2 The first and 
most primitive of these ways is meditation. This, she says, is 
like drawing water by hand from a deep well: the slowest and. 
most laborious of all means of irrigation. Next to this is 
the orison of quiet, which is a little better and easier: for here 
soul seems to receive some help, ze., with the stilling of the senses 
the subliminal faculties are brought into play. The well has 
now been fitted with a windlass—that little Moorish water-wheel 
possessed by every Castilian farm. Hence we get more water 
for the energy we expend: more sense of reality in exchange 
for our abstraction from the unreal. Also “the water is higher, 
and accordingly the labour is much less than it was when the 
water had to be drawn out of the depths of the well. I 
mean that the water is nearer to it, for grace now reveals itself 
more distinctly to the soul.’ In the third stage we leave all 
voluntary activities of the mind : the gardener no longer depends 
on his own exertions, contact between subject and object is 
established, there is no more stress and strain. It is as if a little 
river now ran through our garden and watered it. We have but 
to direct the stream. In the fourth and highest stage God 
Himself waters our garden with rain from heaven “drop by 
drop.” The attitude of the self is now that of perfect 
receptivity, “ passive contemplation,” loving trust. Individual 
activity is sunk in the “great life of the All.” 

Now the measure of the mystic’s real progress is and must 
always be the measure of his love: for his apprehension is an 
apprehension of the heart. His education, his watering of 
the garden of the soul, is a cultivation of this one flower—this 
Rosa Mystica which has its root in God. The degrees of 
his orison, then, will be accompanied step by step by those other 
degrees of exalted feeling-states which Richard of St. Victor 


* Coventry Patmore, ‘‘ The Kod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘‘ Aurea Dicta,” xiii, 
* Vida, cap. ii. §§ ro and 11. 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 373 


called the Degrees of Ardent Love. Without their presence, all 
the drill in the world will not bring him to the true contempla- 
tive state, though it may easily produce abnormal powers 
of perception of the kind familiar to students of the occult. 

Our theory of mystic education, then, turns out to be very . 
like our theory of mystic life. In both, there is a progressive 
surrender of selfhood under the steady advance of conquering 
love; a stilling of the “I, the Me, the Mine,” which is linked by 
all the senses, and by all its own desires, to the busy world of 
visible things. This progressive surrender appears in the prac- 
‘tice of orison as a progressive inward retreat from circumference 
to centre; to that ground of the soul, that substantial somewhat 
in man, deep buried for most of us beneath the great rubbish- 
heap of our surface-interests, where human life and divine life 
meet. To clear away the rubbish-heap so that he may get 
down to this treasure-house is from one point of view the initial 
task of the contemplative. This clearing away is the first part 
of “introversion”: that journey inwards to his own centre 
where, stripped of all his cleverness and merit, reduced to his 
“ nothingness,” he can “meet God without intermediary.” This 
ground of the soul, this strange inward sanctuary to which the 
normal man so seldom penetrates, is, says Eckhart, “imme- 
diately receptive of the Divine Being,” and “no one can move it 
but God alone.”! There the finite self encounters the Infinite; 
and, by a close and loving communion with and feeding on the 
attributes of the Divine Substance, is remade in the interests 
of the Absolute Life. This encounter, the consummation ot 
mystical culture, is what we mean by contemplation in its 
highest form. Here we are on the verge of that great self- | 
merging act which is of the essence of pure love: which Reality 
has sought of us, and we have unknowingly desired of It. 
Here contemplation and union are one. “Thus do we grow,” 
says Ruysbroeck, “and, carried above ourselves, above reason, 
into the very heart of love, there do we feed according to the 
spirit; and taking flight for the Godhead by naked love, we go 
to the encounter of the Bridegroom, to the encounter of His 
Spirit, which is His love; and this immense love burns and con- 
sumes us in the spirit, and draws us into that union where bliss 
awaits us,” 2 


aEred, i, 2 Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ De Contemplatione’”’ (Hello, p. 153). 


st 


34 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


RECOLLECTION 


The beginning of the process of introversion, the first 
mechanical act in which the self turns round towards the inward 
path, will not merely be the yielding to an instinct, the indul- 
sence of a natural taste for reverie ; it will be a voluntary and 
purposeful undertaking. Like conversion, it entails a break 
with the obvious, which must, of necessity, involve and affect 
the whole normal consciousness. It will be evoked by the 
mystic’s love, and directed by his reason; but can only be 
accomplished by the strenuous exercise of his will. These 
preparatory labours of the contemplative life—these first steps 
upon the ladder—are, says St. Teresa, very hard, and require 
greater courage than all the rest.t All the scattered interests 
of the self have here to be collected ; there must be a deliberate 
and unnatural act of attention, a deliberate expelling of all dis- 
cordant images from the consciousness—a hard and ungrateful 
task. Since, at this point, the transcendental faculties are still 
young and weak, the senses not wholly mortified, it needs a 
stern determination, a “wilful choice,” if we are to succeed in 
concentrating our attention upon the whispered messages from 


a: 


within, undistracted by the loud voices which besiege us from 


without. 

“ How,” says the Disciple to the Master in one of Boehme’s 
“Dialogues,” “am I to seek in the Centre this Fountain of 
Light which may enlighten me throughout and bring my 
properties into perfect harmony? I am in Nature, as I said 
before, and which way shall I pass through Nature and the 


light thereof, so that 1 may come into the supernatural and . 


supersensual ground whence this true Light, which is the Light 
of Minds, doth arise; and this without the destruction of my 


nature, or quenching the Light of it, which is my reason? 


“ Master. Cease but from thine own activity, steadfastly 
fixing thine Eye upon ome Point. ... For this end, gather in 
all thy thoughts, and by faith press into the Centre, laying hold 
upon the Word of God, which is infallible and which hath called 
thee. Be thou obedient to this call, and be silent before the 
Lord, sitting alone with Him in thy inmost and most hidden 


* Vida, cap. xi. § 17. 


‘, 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 375 


cell, thy mind being centrally united in itself, and attending His 
Will in the patience of hope. So shall thy Light break forth 
as the morning, and after the redness thereof is passed, the Sun 
himself, which thou waitest for, shall arise unto thee, and under 
his most healing wings thou shalt greatly rejoice: ascending 
and descending in his bright and health-giving beams. Behold 
this is the true Supersensual Ground of Life.” ! 

In this short paragraph Boehme has caught and described 
the psychological state in which all introversion must begin: 
the primary simplification of consciousness—the steadfast fixing 
the soul’s eye upon one point; the turning inwards of the whole 
conative powers for a purpose rather believed in than known, 
“by faith pressing into the centre.” 

The unfortunate word Recollection, which the hasty reader is 
apt to connect with remembrance, is the traditional term by 
which mystical writers define just such a voluntary concentra- 
tion, such a first collecting or gathering in of the attention of 
the self to its “most hidden cell.” That self is as yet unac- 
quainted with the strange, changeless, and indescribable plane 
of silence which so soon becomes familiar to those who attempt 
even the lowest activities of the contemplative life; where the 
noises of the world are never heard, and the great adventures 
of the spirit take place. It stands here between two planes of 
being ; the Eye of Time is still awake. It knows that it wants 
to enter the inner world, that “interior palace where the King 
of Kings is guest”2: but it must find some device to help it 
over the threshold—rather, in the language of modern psycho- 
logy, to shift that threshold and permit its subliminal intuition 
of the Absolute to emerge. 

This device is as a rule the practice of meditation, in which 
the state of Recollection usually begins: that is to say, the 
deliberate consideration of and dwelling upon some one aspect 
of Reality—an aspect most usually chosen from amongst the 
religious beliefs of the self. Thus Hindu mystics will brood 
upon a sacred word, whilst Christian contemplatives set before 
their minds one of the names or attributes of God, a fragment 
of Scripture, an incident of the life of Christ; and allow— 
indeed encourage—this consideration, and the ideas and feelings 


 “* Dialogues of the Supersensual Life,” p. 56. 
? St. Teresa, ‘‘ Camino de Perfeccion,” cap. xxx, 


376 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


which flow from it, to occupy the whole mental field. This 
powerful suggestion, kept before the consciousness by an act 
-of will, overpowers the stream of small suggestions which the 
outer world pours incessantly upon the mind. The self, con- 
centrated upon this image or idea, dwelling on it more than 
thinking about it, as one may gaze upon’a picture that one 
loves, falls gradually and insensibly into the condition of 
reverie; and, protected by this holy day-dream from the more 
distracting dream of life, sinks into itself, and becomes in the 
language of asceticism “recollected” or gathered together. 
Although it is deliberately ignoring the whole of its usual 
“external universe,” its faculties are wide awake: all have had 
their part in the wilful production of this state of consciousness : 
and this it is which marks off meditation and recollection from 
the higher or “infused” degrees of orison. 

Such meditation as this, says Richard of St. Victor, i is the 
activity proper to a mystic who has attained the first degree of 
ardent love. By it, “God enters into the mind,” and “the mind 
also enters into itself”; and thus receives in its inmost cell the 
“first visit of the Beloved.” It is a kind of half-way house 
between the perception of Appearance and the perception of 
Reality. To one in whom this state is established consciousness 
seems like a blank field, save for the “one point” in its centre, 
the subject of the meditation. Towards this focus the intro- 
versive self seems to press inwards from every side ; still faintly 
conscious of the buzz of the external world outside its ramparts, 
but refusing to respond to its appeals. Presently the subject of 
meditation begins to take on a new significance; to glow with 
life and light. The contemplative suddenly feels that he knows 
it, in the complete, vital, but indescribable way in which one 
knows a friend. More, that through it hints are coming to him 
of mightier, nameless things. It ceases to be a picture, and 
becomes a window through which, by straining all his facul- 
ties, the mystic peers out into the spiritual universe and appre- 
hends to some extent—though how, he knows not—the veritable 
presence of God. 

In these meditative and recollective states, the self still feels 
very clearly the edge of its own personality: its separateness 
from the Somewhat Other, the divine reality set over against 
the soul. It is aware of that reality: the subject of its medita- 


~~ 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 377 


tion becomes a symbol through which it receives a distinct 
message from the transcendental world. But there is yet no 
conscious fusion with a greater Life; no resting in the divine 
atmosphere as in the “Quiet”; no involuntary and ecstatic 
lifting up of the soul to direct apprehension of truth, as in con- 
templation. Recollection is a perfectly definite psychic condi- 
tion, which has perfectly logical psychic results. Originally 
induced by meditation, or the dreamy pondering upon certain 
aspects of the Real, it develops, by way of the strenuous control 
exercised by the will over the understanding, a power of cutting 
the connexion between the self and the external world, and 
retreating at will to the inner world of the spirit. 

“True recollection,” says St. Teresa, “has characteristics 
by which it can be easily recognized. It produces a certain 
effect which I do not know how to explain, but which is well 
understood by those who have experienced it.... It is true 
that recollection has several degrees, and that in the beginning 
these great effects are not felt, because it is not yet pro- 
found enough. But support the pains which you first feel in 
recollecting yourself, despise the rebellion of nature, overcome 
the resistance of the body, which loves a liberty which is its 
ruin, learn self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will 
perceive very clearly the advantages which you gain from it. 
As soon as you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel 
your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees 
which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work 
at the making of honey: and this will take place without effort 
Or care on your part. God thus rewards the violence which 
your soul has been doing to itself; and gives to it such a 
domination over the senses that a sign is enough when it desires 
to recollect itself, for them to obey and so gather themselves 
together.. At the first call of the will, they come back more and 
More quickly. At last after many and many exercises of this 
kind, God disposes them to a state of absolute repose and of 
derfect contemplation.” ? 

Such a description as this makes it clear that “recollection” 
sa form of spiritual gymnastics; less valuable for itself than 
or the training which it gives, the powers which it develops. 
in it, says St. Teresa again, the soul enters with its God into 


* « Camino de Perfeccion,” cap. xxx. 





378 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


that Paradise which is within itself, and shuts the door behind 
it upon all the things of the world. “You should know, my 
daughters,” she continues, “that this is no supernatural act, but 
depends upon our will, and that therefore we can do it with that 
ordinary assistance of God which we need for all our acts and 
even for our good thoughts. For here we are not concerned 
with the silence of the faculties, but with a simple retreat of 
these powers into the ground of the soul. There are various 
ways of arriving at it, and these ways are described in different 
books... There it is said that we must abstract the mind from 
exterior things, in order that we may inwardly approach God: 
that even in our work we ought to retire within ourselves, 
though it be only for a moment: that this remembrance of a 
God who companions us within, is a great help to us; finally, 
that we ought little by little to habituate ourselves to gentle and 
silent converse with Him, so that He may make us feel His 
presence in the soul.” 2 


QUIET 


More important for us, because more characteristically 
mystical, is the next great stage of orison: that curious and 
extremely definite mental state which mystics call the Interior 
Silence, or “ Orison of Quiet.” This represents the results for 
consciousness of a further degree of that inward retreat which 
Recollection began. 

Out of the deep, slow brooding and pondering on some 
mystery, some incomprehensible link. between himself and the 
Real, the contemplative—perhaps by way of a series of moods 
which his analytic powers may cause him “nicely to distinguish’ 
—glides, almost insensibly, on to a plane of perception for 
which human speech has few equivalents. It is a plane whicl 
is apparently characterized by an immense increase in the 
receptivity of the self, and by an almost complete suspensior 
of the reflective powers. The strange silence which is the 
outstanding quality of this state—almost the only note in regarc 
to it which the surface-intelligence can secure—is not describable 
Here, as Samuel Rutherford said of another of life’s secrets 
“ Come and see will tell you much: come nearer will say more, 

* Of, cit., cap. xxxi, 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 379 


Here the self has passed beyond the stage at which its per- 
ceptions are capable of being dealt with by thought. It cannot 
any longer “take notes”: can only surrender itself to the stream 
of an inflowing life, and to the direction of a larger will. Busy, 
teasing, utilitarian thought would only interfere with this process: 
as it interferes with the vital processes of the body if it once 
sets them under its control. That thought, then, already 
disciplined by Recollection, gathered up, and forced to work in 
the interests of the transcendental mind, is now to be entirely 
inhibited. 

As Recollection becomes deeper, the self slides into a 
dreamy consciousness of the Infinite. The door tight shut on 
the sensual world, it becomes aware that it is immersed in a 
more real world which it cannot define. It rests quietly in this 
awareness : quite silent, utterly at peace. In the place of the 
struggles for complete concentration which mark the beginning 
of Recollection, there is now an entire surrender of the will and 
activity, of the very power of choice: and with this surrender to 
something bigger, as with the surrender of conversion, comes an 
immense relief of strain. This is “ Quiet” in its most perfect 
form: this sinking, as it were, of the little child of the Infinite 
into its Father’s arms. 

The giving up of I-hood, the process of self-stripping, which 
we have seen to be the very essence of the purification of thie 
self, finds its correspondence in this part of the contemplative 
*xperience. Here, in this complete cessation of man’s proud 
:ffort to do somewhat of himself, Humility, who rules the Fourth 
Degree of Love, begins to be known in her paradoxical beauty 
ind power. Consciousness here loses to find, and dies that it 
may live. No longer, in Rolle’s pungent phrase, is it a 
fRaunsaker of the myghte of Godd and of His Majeste.”: 
rhus the act by which it passes into the Quiet is a sacrament 
of the whole mystic quest: of the turning from doing to 
being, the abolition of separateness in the interests of the 
Absolute Life. 

The state of “ Quiet,” we have said, entails an utter suspension 
of the surface-consciousness: yet consciousness of the subject’s 
versonality remains. It follows, generally, on a period of 
leliberate and loving recollection, of a slow and steady with- 


* Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle (E.E.T.S. 20), p. 42. 





380 | AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


drawal of the attention from the channels of sense. To on 
who is entering into this state of orison, the external worl« 
seems to get further and further away : till at last nothing bu 
the paramount fact of his own existence remains. So startling 
very often, is the deprivation of all his accustomed menta 
furniture, of the noise and flashing of the transmitting instru 
ments of sense, that the negative aspect of his state dominate 
consciousness ; and he can but describe it as a nothingness, a1 
emptiness, a “naked” orison. He is there, as it were poised 
resting, waiting, he does not know for what: only he is consciou 
that all, even in this utter emptiness, is well. Presently, how 
ever, he becomes aware that Something fills this emptiness 
something omnipresent, intangible, like sunny air. Ceasing t 
attend to the messages from without, he begins to notice Tha 
which has always been within. His whole being is thrown ope: 
to its influence: it permeates his consciousness. 

There are, then, two aspects of the Orison of Quiet: th 
aspect of deprivation, of emptiness which begins it, and th 
aspect of acquisition, of something found, in which it is complete 
In its description, all mystics will be found to lean to one sid 
or the other, to the affirmative or negative element which i 
contains. The austere mysticism of Eckhart and his follower: 
their temperamental sympathy with the Neoplatonic languag 
of Dionysius the Areopagite, caused them to describe it—an) 
also very often the higher state of contemplation to which 1 
leads—as above all things an emptiness, a sublime dark, a 
ecstatic deprivation. They will not profane its deep satisfaction 
by the inadequate terms proper to earthly peace and joy: anc 
true to their school, fall back on the paradoxically suggestiv 
powers of negation. To St. Teresa, and mystics of her type, o' 
the other hand, even a little and inadequate image of its raptur 
seems better than none. To them it is a sweet calm, a gent! 
silence, in which the lover apprehends the presence of th 
Beloved: a God-given state, over which the self has little contro 

In Eckhart’s writings enthusiastic descriptions of the Quie 
of inward silence and passivity, as the fruit of a deliberat 
recollection, abound. In his view, this psychical state of Quie 
is pre-eminently that in which the soul of man begins to b 
united with its “ground,” Pure Being. The emptying of th 
field of consciousness, its cleansing of all images—even ¢ 





INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 381 


hose symbols of Reality which are the subjects of meditation— 
s the necessary condition under which alone this encounter 
tan take place. 

“The soul,” he says, “with all its powers, has divided and 
icattered itself in outward things, each according to its functions: 
he power of sight in the eye, the power of hearing in the ear, 
he power of taste in the tongue, and thus they are the less able 
o work inwardly, for every power which is divided is imperfect. 
30 the soul, if she would work inwardly, must call home all her 
»owers and collect them from all divided things to one inward 
york... . Ifa man will work an inward work, he must pour all 
lis powers into himself as into a corner of the soul, and must 
lide himself from all images and forms, and then he can work. 
[hen he must come into a forgetting and a not-knowing. He 
nust be in a stillness and silence, where the Word may be 
leard. One cannot draw near to this Word better than by 
tillness and silence: then it is heard and understood in utter 
gnorance. When one knows nothing it is opened and revealed. 
Then we shall become aware of the Divine Ignorance, and our 
znorance will be ennobled and adorned with supernatural know- 
zdge. And when we simply keep ourselves receptive, we are 
nore perfect than when at work.” 
| The psychic state of Quiet has a further value for the mystic, 
s being the intellectual complement and expression of the 
loral state of humility and receptivity: the very condition, 
ays Eckhart, of the New Birth. “It may be asked whether 
his Birth is best accomplished in Man when he does his work 
nd Jorms and thinks himself into God, or when he keeps 
imself in Silence, stillness and peace, so that God may speak 
ha work in him; .. . the best and noblest way in which thou 
layst come into this work and life is by keeping silence and 
*tting God work and speak. When all the powers are with- 
rawn from their work and images, there is this word spoken.” 2 
_ Eckhart’s view of the primary importance of “ Quiet” as 
ssentially ¢/e introverted state is shared by all those mediaeval 
iystics who lay stress on the psychological rather than the 
bjective aspect of the spiritual life. They regard it as the 
ecessary preliminary of all contemplation ; and describe it as, 
normal phase of the inner experience, possible of attainment 


* Meister Eckhart, Pred. ii. », 9 Zbad,, Pred. i, 


382 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


by all those who have sufficiently disciplined themselves in 
patience, recollection, and humility. 

In a certain old English mystical work which still remains 
in MS.—one of that group of treatises of the fourteenth century 
of which “ The Cloud of Unknowing ” is the best known—there 
is a curious and detailed instruction on the disposition of mind 
proper to this orison of silence. It clearly owes much to the 
teaching of the Areopagite, something perhaps to Eckhart 
himself, and something surely—if we may judge by its vivid 
and exact instructions—to personal experience. ‘When thou 
comest by thyself,’ says the master to the disciple for whom 
this “ pystle ” was composed, “think not before what thou shalt 
do after: but forsake as well good thoughts as evil thoughts, 
and pray not with thy mouth, but lift thee right well... . And 
look that nothing live in thy working mind but a naked intent 
stretching unto God, not clothed in any special thought of God 
in thyself, how He is in Himself or in any of His works, but 
only that He is as He is. Let Him be so,I pray thee, and 
make Him on none otherwise speech nor search in Him by 
subtilty of wit: but delieve by thy ground. This naked intent 
freely fastened and grounded by very belief, shall be nought else 
to thy thought and thy feeling but a naked thought and a blinc 
feeling of thine own being. ... That darkness be thy mirror 
and thy mind whole. Think no further of thyself than I bic 
thee do of thy God, so that thou be oned with Him in spirit a: 
in thought, without departing and scattering, for he is thy being 
and in Him thou art that thou art: not only by cause and by 
being, but also He is in thee both thy cause and thy being 
And therefore think on God as in this work as thou dost or 
thyself, and on thyself as thou dost on God, that He is as He ii 
and thou art as thou art, and that thy thought be not scatterec 
nor departed but privied in Him that is All.” 7 

“Let Him be so,I praythee!” It is an admonition agains 
spiritual worry, an entreaty to the individual, already at worl 
twisting experience to meet his own conceptions, to let thing 
be as they are, to receive and be content. Leave off doing, tha 
you may be. Leave off analysis, that you may know. “Tha 
meek darkness be thy mirror”—humble receptivity is th 
watchword of this state. “In this,” says Eckhart finely, “th 


t <¢ An Epistle of Private Counsel” (B.M. Harl. 674). 





INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 383 


soul is of equal capacity with God. As God is boundless in 
giving, so the soul is boundless in receiving. And as God is 
almighty in His work, so the soul is an abyss of receptivity : 
and so she is formed anew with God and in God... . The 
disciples of St. Dionysius asked him why Timotheus surpassed 
them all in perfection. Then said Dionysius, ‘ Timotheus is 
receptive of God. And thus thine ignorance is not a defect 
but thy highest perfection, and thine inactivity thy highest work. 
And so in this work thou must bring all thy works to nought 
and all thy powers into silence, if thou wilt in truth experience 
this birth within thyself.” 2 

It is interesting to contrast these descriptions of the Quiet 
with St. Teresa’s temperamental reaction on the same psycho- 
logical state. Where the English mystic’s teaching is full of an 
implied appeal to the will, the Spanish saint is all for the 
involuntary, or, as she would call it, the “ supernatural” actions 
of the soul. “ This true orison of quiet,” she says, “has in it an 
element of the supernatural. We cannot, in spite of all our 
efforts, procure it for ourselves. It is a sort of peace in which 
the soul establishes herself, or rather in which God establishes 
the soul, as He did the righteous Simeon. All her powers are 
at rest. She understands, but otherwise than by the senses, that 
she is already near her God, and that if she draws a little nearer, 
she will become by union one with Him. She does not see this 
with the eyes of the body, nor with the eyes of the soul... . 
It is like the repose of a traveller who, within sight of the goal, 
stops to take breath, and then continues with new strength upon 
his way. One feels a great bodily comfort, a great satisfaction 
of soul: such is the happiness of the soul in seeing herself close 
to the spring, that even without drinking of the waters she finds 
herself refreshed. It seems to her that she wants nothing more: 
the faculties which are at rest would like always to remain still, 
for the least of their movements is able to trouble or prevent her 
love. Those who are in this orison wish their bodies to remain 
motionless, for it seems to them that at the least movement 
they will lose this sweet peace . . . they are in the palace close 
to their King, and they see that He begins to give them His 
kingdom. It seems to them that they are no longer in the 
world, and they wish neither to hear nor to see it, but only 


| * Eckhart, Pred. it. 





384 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


‘God. ... There is this difference between the orison of 
quiet and that in which the whole soul is united to God; 
that in this last the soul has not to absorb the Divine Food, 
God deposits it with her, she knows not how. The orison 
of quiet, on the other hand, demands, it seems to me, a 
slight effort, but it is accompanied by so much sweetness 
that one hardly feels it.” 

“A slight effort,” says St. Teresa. “A naked intent 
stretching,” says the “Pystle of Private Counsel.” In these 
words lies the difference between the true and healthy mystic 
state of “Quiet” and its morbid perversion in “ Quietism” 
the difference between the tense stillness of the athlete and 
the limp passivity of the sluggard, who is really lazy, though 
he looks resigned. True “Quiet” is a means, not an end: 
is actively embraced, not passively endured. It is an incident 
in the selfs growth in contemplation; a bridge which leads 
from its old and unco-ordinated life of activity to its new, 
unified life of deep action—the real “mystic life” of man, 
This state is desired by the mystic, not in order that conscious- 
ness may remain a blank, but in order that the “Word 
which is Alive” may be written thereon. Too often, however, 
this primary fact has been ignored, and the Interior Silence 
has been put by wayward transcendentalists to other and 
less admirable use. | 

“Quiet” is the danger-zone of introversion. Of all the 
forms of mystical activity, perhaps this has been the most 
abused, the least understood. Its theory, seized upon, 
divorced from its context, and developed to excess, produced 
the foolish and dangerous exaggerations of Quietism: and 
these, in their turn, caused a wholesale condemnation of the 
principle of passivity, and made many superficial persons 
regard “naked orison” as an essentially heretical act2 The 
accusation of Quietism has been hurled at many mystics 
whose only fault was a looseness of language which laid 
them open to misapprehension. Others, however, have 
certainly contrived, by a perversion and isolation of the 


* “©Camino de Perfeccion,” cap. xxxiii. The whole chapter, which is a marvel. 
of subtle analysis, should be read in this connexion. | 
? Note, for instance, the cautious language of ‘‘ Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iii. | 
cap. vii. 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 385 


teachings of great contemplatives on this point, to justify 
the deliberate production of a half-hypnotic state of passivity. 
With this meaningless state of “absorption in nothing at all” 
they were content; claiming that in it they were in touch 
with the divine life, and therefore exempt from the usual 
duties and limitations of human existence. “Quietism,” 
usually, and rather unfairly, spoken of in connexion with 
Madame Guyon, already existed in a far more dangerous 
and perverted form in the Middle Ages: and was denounced 
with violence by Ruysbroeck, one of the greatest masters of 
true introversion whom the Christian world has known. 

“It is important, in the spiritual life,’ he says, “that we 
should know, denounce, and crush all quietism. These quietists 
remain in a state of utter passivity, and in order that they may 
the more tranquilly enjoy their false repose they abstain from 
every interior and exterior act. Such a repose is treason to 
God, a crime of 2se-mazeste. Quietism blinds a man, plunging 
him into that ignorance which is not superior, but inferior, to all 
knowledge: such a man remains seated within himself, useless 
and inert. This repose is simply laziness, and this tranquillity is 
forgetfulness of God, one’s self and one’s neighbour. It is the 
exact opposite of the divine peace, the opposite of the peace of 
the Abyss; of that marvellous peace which is full of activity, full of 
affection, full of desire, full of seeking, that burning and insatiable 
peace which we pursue more and more after we have found it. - 
Between the peace of the heights and the quietism of the depths 
there is all the difference that exists between God and a mis- 
taken creature. Horrible error! Men seek it themselves, they 
establish themselves comfortably within themselves, and no 
longer seek God even by their desires. Yet it is not He whom 
they possess in their deceitful repose.” ? 

There can be no doubt that for selves of a certain psychical 
constitution, this “ deceitful repose” is only too easy of attain- 
ment. They can by wilful self-suggestion deliberately produce 
this emptiness, this inward silence, and luxuriate in its 
peaceful effects. To do this from self-regarding motives, or to 
do it to excess—to let “peaceful enjoyment” swamp “active 
love”—is a mystical vice: and this perversion of the spiritual 


* Hello, p. 17. Hello has here condensed Ruysbroeck’s teaching on this point, 
which fills the last four chapters of bk. ii. of ‘* L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 
ce 


386 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


faculties, like perversion of the natural faculties, brings de- 
generation in its train. It leads to the absurdities of “holy 
indifference,” and ends in the complete stultification of the 
mental and moral life. The true mystic never tries deliberately 
to enter the orison of quiet: with St. Teresa, he regards it as a 
supernatural gift, beyond his control, though fed by his will and 
love. That is to say, where it exists in a healthy form, it exists 
as a natural though involuntary state the result of normal de- 
velopment; not as a self-induced one, a psychic trick. 

The balance to be struck in this stage of introversion can 
only be expressed, it seems, in paradox. The true condition of 
quiet, according to the great mystics, is at once active and 
passive: it is pure surrender, but a surrender which is not limp 
self-abandonment, but rather the free and constantly renewed 
self-giving and self-emptying of a burning love. The depart- 
mental intellect is silenced, but the totality of character is flung 
open to the influence of the Real. Personality is not lost: only 
its hard edge is gone. A “rest most busy,’ says Hilton. Like 
the soaring of an eagle, says Augustine Baker, when “the flight 
is continued for a good space with a great swiftness, but withal 
with great stillness, quietness and ease, without any waving of 
the wings at all, or the least force used in any member, being in 
as much ease and stillness as if she were reposing in her nest.” = 

“ According to the unanimous teaching of the most experi- 
enced and explicit of the specifically Theistic and Christian 
mystics,’ says Von Hiigel, “the appearance, the soul’s own 
impression, of a cessation of life and energy of the soul in 
periods of special union with God, or of great advance in spiritu- 
ality, is an appearance only. Indeed this, at such times strong, 
impression of rest springs most certainly from an unusually large 
amount of actualized energy, an energy which is now penetra- 
ting, and finding expression by every pore and fibre of the soul. 
The whole moral and spiritual creature expands and rests, yes; 
but this very rest is produced by Action, “unperceived because 
so fleet, so near, so all-fulfilling.” 2 

The great teachers of Quietism, having arrived at and ex- 
perienced the psychological state of “quiet”: having known the 
ineffable peace and certainty, the bliss which follows on its act 

* “* Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iii. cap. vii. 
_ * Von Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. ii. p. 132, 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 387 


of complete surrender, its utter and speechless resting in the 
Absolute Life, believed themselves to have discovered in this 
half-way house the goal of the mystic quest. Therefore, whilst 
much of their teaching remains true, as a real description of a 
real and valid state experienced by almost all contemplatives in 
the course of their development, the inference which they drew 
from it, that in this mere blank abiding in the deeps the soul had 
reached the end of her course, was untrue and bad for life. 

Thus Molinos gives in the Spiritual Guide many unex- 
ceptional maxims upon Interior Silence: “ By not speaking nor 
desiring, and not thinking,” he says justly enough of the contem- 
plative spirit, “ she arrives at the true and perfect mystical silence 
wherein God speaks with the soul, communicates Himself to it, 
and in the abyss of its own depth teaches it the most perfect and 
exalted wisdom. Hecalls and guides it to this inward solitude 
and mystical silence, when He says that He will speak to it 
alone im the most secret and hidden part of the heart.” Here 
Molinos speaks the language of all mystics, yet the total result 
of his teaching was to suggest to the ordinary mind that there 
was a peculiar virtue in doing nothing at all, and that all 
deliberate spiritual activities were bad.* 

A good deal of the pseudo-mysticism which is industriously 
preached at the present time is thus crudely quietistic. It 
speaks much of the necessity of “going into the silence,” and 
even, with a strange temerity, gives preparatory lessons in sub- 
conscious meditation: a proceeding which might well provoke 
the laughter of the saints. The faithful, being gathered to- 
gether, are taught by simple exercises in recollection the way 
to attain the “Quiet.” By this mental trick the modern tran- 
scendentalist naturally attains to a state of vacant placidity, in 
which he rests: and “remaining in a distracted idleness and 
misspending the time in expectation of extraordinary visits,” . 
believes—with a faith which many of the orthodox might envy 
—that he is here “united with his Principle.” But, though the 
psychological state which contemplatives call the orison of quiet is 
a very common condition of mystical attainment, it is not by itself 
mystical at all. It is a state of preparation: a way of opening 
the door. That which comes in when the door is opened will 


t He goes so far as to say in one of his ‘‘ condemned”? propositions, “ Oportet 
hominem suas potentias annihilare,” and ‘‘ velle operari active est Deum offendere.” 


388 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


be that which we truly and passionately desire. The will makes 
plain the way : the heart—the whole man—conditions the guest, 
The true contemplative, coming to this plane of utter stillness, 
does not desire “extraordinary favours and visitations,” but the 
privilege of breathing for a little while the atmosphere of Love, 
He is about that which St. Bernard called “ the business of all 
businesses”: goes, in perfect simplicity, to the encounter of 
Perfection, not to the development of himself. 

So, even at this—seemingly the most “passive ”—stage of 
his progress, his operations are found on analysis to have a 
dynamic and purposive character: his very repose is the result 
of stress. He is a pilgrim that still seeks his country. Urged 
by his innate tendency to transcendence, he is on his way to 
higher levels, more sublime fulfilments, greater self-giving acts, 
Though he may have forsaken all superficial activity, deep, 
urgent action still remains. “The possession of God,” says 
Ruysbroeck, “demands and supposes perpetual activity. He 
who thinks otherwise deceives himself and others. All our 
life as it is in God is immersed in blessedness: all our life as it 
is in ourselves is immersed in activity. And these two lives 
form one, self-contradictory in its attributes; rich and poor, 
hungry and fulfilled, active and quiet.” The essential differ- 
ence between this true “active” Quiet and Quietism of all 
kinds has been admirably expressed by Baron von Hiigel. 
“Quietism, the doctrine of the One Act; passivity in a literal 
sense, as the absence or imperfection of the power or use of 
initiative on the soul’s part, in any and every state; these doc- 
trines were finally condemned, and most rightly and necessarily 
condemned ; the Prayer of Quiet and the various states and 
degrees of an ever-increasing predominance of Action over 
Activity—an action which is all the more the soul’s very own, 
because the more occasioned, directed, and informed by God’s 
action and stimulation—these and the other chief lines of the 
ancient experience and practice remain as true, correct, and 
necessary as ever.” ? 

The “ever-increasing predominance of Action over 
Activity "—the deep and vital movement of the whole 
self, too deeply absorbed for self-consciousness, set over 


* « De Contemplatione,” Hello, p. 147. 
# «The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. ii. p. 143. 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 389 


against its fussy surface-energies—here is the true ideal of 
orison. This must inform all the self’s effort towards union 
with the absolute Life and Love which waits at the door. It is 
an ideal which includes Quiet as surely as it excludes 
Quietism. 

As for that doctrine of the One Act here mentioned, which 
was preached by the more extreme quietists ; it, like all else in 
this movement, was the perversion of a great mystical truth. It 
taught that the turning of the soul towards Reality, the 
merging of the will in God, which is the very heart of the 
mystic life, was Oe Act, never to be repeated. This done, the 
self had nothing more to do but to rest in the Divine Life, be 
its unresisting instrument. Pure passivity and_ indifference 
were its ideal. All activity was forbidden it, all choice 
was a negation of its surrender, all striving was unneces- 
sary and wrong. It needed only to rest for ever more 
and “let God work and speak in the silence.” This 
doctrine is so utterly at variance with all that we know of 
the laws of life and growth, that it hardly seems to stand in need 
of condemnation. Such a state of indifference—which the 
quietists strove in vain to identify with that state of Pure Love 
which “seeketh not its own” in spiritual things—cannot 
coexist with any of those “degrees of ardent charity” through 
which man’s spirit must pass on its journey to the One: and 
this alone is enough to prove its non-mystical character. 

It is only fair to Madame Guyon to say that she cannot 
justly be charged with preaching this exaggeration of passivity, 
whatever inferences a loose and fluid style may have allowed 
her enemies and more foolish followers to draw from her works. 
“Some persons,” she says, “when they hear of the orison of 
quiet, falsely imagine that the soul remains stupid, dead, and 
inactive. But unquestionably it acteth therein, more nobly and 
more extensively than it had ever done before, for God Himself 
is the Mover and the soul now acteth by the agency of His 
Spirit. ... Instead, then, of promoting idleness, we promote 
the highest activity, by inculcating a total dependence on 
the Spirit of God as our moving principle, for in Him we live 
and move and have our being. This meek dependence on the 
Spirit of God is indispensably necessary to reinitiate the soul in 
its primeval unity and simplicity, that it may thereby attain the 


390 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


end of its creation. . . . Our activity should therefore consist in 
endeavouring to acquire and maintain such a state as may be 
most susceptible of divine impressions, most flexile to all the 
operations of the Eternal Word. Whilst a tablet is unsteady, 
the painter is unable to delineate a true copy: so every act of 
our own selfish and proper spirit is productive of false and 
erroneous lineaments, it interrupts the work and defeats the 
design of this Adorable Artist. We must, then, remain 
tranquil and move only when He moves us.”! 

In another metaphor, the contemplative’s progress must 
involve an advance from the active and laborious watering of 
the soul’s garden which he practised in Meditation, to that state 
of transcendence in which the river of life flows through it 
unchecked : wells up, as St. Teresa says in another place, from 
a hidden spring, and does not enter by an aqueduct from 
without. 2 

The true mystics, in whom the Orison of Quiet develops 
to this state of receptivity, seldom use in describing it the 
language of “holy indifference.” Their love and enthusiasm 
will not let them do that. It is true, of course, that they are 
indifferent to all else save the supreme claims of love: but then, 
it is of love that they speak. Ego dormtio et cor meum vigilat. 
“This,” says St. Teresa, “is a sleep of the powers of the soul, 
which are not wholly lost, nor yet understanding how they are at 
work. . . . To me it seems to be nothing else than a death, as 
it were, to all the things of this world, and a fruition of God. I 
know of no other words whereby to describe it or explain 
it; neither does the soul then know what to do—for it knows 
not whether to speak or be silent, whether it should laugh or 
weep. It is a glorious folly, a heavenly madness, wherein true 
wisdom is acquired ; and to the soul a kind of fruition most full 
of delight... . The faculties of the soul now retain only the 
power of occupying themselves wholly with God; not one of 
them ventures to stir, neither can we move one of them without 
making great efforts to distract ourselves—and, indeed, I do not 
think we can do it at all at this time.” 3 


* «Moyen Court,” cap. xxi. Madame Guyon’s vague and shifting language, how- 
ever, sometimes lays her open to other and more strictly ‘‘quietistic ’’ interpretations. 

2 **¥F] Castillo Interior,” Moradas Cuartas, cap. iii. 

3 Vida, cap. xvi. §§ 1 and 4. 


INTROVERSION: RECOLLECTION AND QUIET 391 


Here, then, we see the Orison of Silence melting into true 
contemplation: its stillness is ruffled by its joy. The Quiet 
reveals itself as‘an essentially transitional state, introducing the 
self into a new sphere of activity. | 

The second degree of ardent love, says Richard of St. Victor, 
binds, so that the soul which is possessed of it is unable to 
think of anything else: it is not only “insuperable,” but also 
“inseparable.” He compares it to the soul’s bridal; the 
definitive, irrevocable act, by which permanent union is initiated. 
The feeling-state which is the equivalent of the Quiet is just such 
a passive and joyous yielding-up of the virgin soul to its Bride- 
groom; a silent marriage-vow. It is ready for all that may 
happen to it, all that may be asked of it—to give itself and 
lose itself, to wait upon the pleasure of its Love. From this 
inward surrender the self emerges to the new life, the new 
knowledge which is mediated to it under the innumerable 
forms of Contemplation. 


t “De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Charitatis” (Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 
excvi. col. 1215 b). 


CHAPTER VII 


INTROVERSION. Part II: CONTEMPLATION 


Contemplation, a state of attainment—Its principal forms—Difference between 
contemplation and ecstasy—Contemplation defined—Its psychology—Delacroix—It 
is a brief act—St. Augustine—It is ‘‘ ineffable” and ‘‘ noetic’’—Contemplation in- 
cludes a large group of states—Its two marks; totality and self-mergence—Dionysius 
the Areopagite—It is a unitive act—Ruysbroeck—Hilton—What do mystics tell us 
of the contemplative act ?—Two things: loving communion and divine ignorance— 
Both represent temperamental reaction—The mystic usually describes his own feeling 
state—Richard Rolle—Two forms of contemplation: transcendental and immanental 
—Contemplation of Transcendence—The Via Negativa—The Divine Dark—The 
Desert of God—Tauler—Maeterlinck—Vision of Transcendence—Dante—Angela of 
Foligno—Contemplation of Immanence—An experience of Personality—Divine Love 
—These two forms really one—Both necessary—Ruysbroeck combines them—The 
process of Contemplation—Dionysius—The Cloud of Unknowing—Boehme—Divine 
Ignorance—Angelo of Foligno—Loving contemplation—St. John of the Cross— 
Rolle—The orison of union—Necessary to a description of the contemplative act— 
Deep orison—St. Teresa 


7 must now consider under the general name of 
Contemplation all those more advanced states of 
introversion in which the mystic attains somewhat: 
the results and rewards of the discipline of Recollection and 
Quiet. If this course of spiritual athletics has done its work, 
he has now brought to the surface, trained and made efficient 
for life, a form of consciousness—a medium of communication 
with reality—which remains un iMawitse in ordinary men. 
Thanks to this faculty, he is now) able to perform the charac- 
teristic mystic act: to obtain a/temporary union with “that 
spiritual fount closed to all reactions from the world of sense, 
where, without witnesses of any kind, God and our Freedom 
meet.” ! 

In the degrees of Recollection, the self trained itself in 
spiritual attention: and at the same time lifted itself to a new 





t Récéjac, ‘‘ Fondements de la Connaissance Mystique,” p. 176. 
? ysuque, p. 17 
392 


INTROVERSION : CONTEMPLATION 393 


level of perception where, by means of the symbol which 
formed the gathering-point of its powers, it received a new 
inflow of life. In the degrees of Quiet it passed on toa state 
characterized by a tense stillness, in which it rested in that 
Reality at which, as yet, it dared not look. Now, in Contem- 
plation, it is to transcend alike the stages of symbol and of 
silence: and “energize enthusiastically” on those high levels 
which are dark to the intellect but radiant to the heart. We 
must expect this contemplative activity to show itself in many . 
different ways and take many different names, since its type 
will be largely governed by individual temperament. It appears 
under the forms which ascetic writers call “ordinary” and 
“extraordinary,” “infused” or “passive” Contemplation; and 
as that “orison of union” which we have already discussed.t 
Sometimes, too, it shows itself under those abnormal psycho- 
physical conditions in which the intense concentration of the 
self upon its overpowering transcendental perceptions results in 
the narrowing of the field of consciousness to a point at which 
all knowledge of the external world is lost, all the messages of 
the senses are utterly ignored. The subject then appears to be 
in a state of trance, characterized by physical rigidity and more 
or less complete anesthesia. These are the conditions of Rap- 
ture or Ecstasy: conditions of which the physical resemblances 
to certain symptoms of hysteria have so greatly reassured the 
enemies of mysticism. 

Rapture and Ecstasy differ from Contemplation proper in 
being wholly involuntary states. Rapture, says St. Teresa, 
who frequently experienced it, is absolutely irresistible; we 
cannot hinder it. Whereas the orison of union, which is one 
of the forms in which pure Contemplation appears at its highest 
point of development, is still controlled to a large extent by 
the will of the subject, and “may be hindered, although that 
resistance be painful and violent.”2 There is thus a sharp 
natural division—a division both physical and psychical— 
established between the contemplative and the ecstatic states: 
and we shall do well to avail ourselves of it in our examination 
of their character. 

First, then, as to Contemplation proper: whatis it? Itisa 
supreme manifestation of that indivisible “power of knowing” 


* Supra, p. 294. * St. Teresa, Vida, cap. xx. §§ 1 and 3. 


394 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


which lies at the root of all our artistic and spiritual satisfac- 
tions. In it, man’s “made Trinity” of thought, love, and will, 
becomes a Unity: and feeling and perception are fused, as they 
are in all our apprehensions of beauty, and best contacts with 
life. It is an act, not of the Reason, but of the whole personality 
working under the stimulus of mystic love. Hence, its results 
feed every aspect of that personality: minister to its instinct 
for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Psychologically it is 
an induced state, in which the field of consciousness is greatly 
contracted: the whole of the self, its conative powers, being 
sharply focused, concentrated upon one thing. We pour our- 
selves out or, as it sometimes seems to us, zz towards this over- 
powering interest: seem to ourselves to reach it and be merged 
with it. Whatever the thing may be, in this act we kuow it, as 
we cannot know it by the mere ordinary devices of thought. 

The turning of our attention from that crisp and definite world 
of multiplicity, that cinematograph-show, with which intelli- 
gence is accustomed and able to deal, has loosed new powers of 
perception which we never knew that we possessed. Instead of 
sharply perceiving the fragment, we feel the solemn presence of 
the whole. Deeper levels of personality are opened up, and go 
gladly to the encounter of the universe. That universe, or some 
Reality hid between it and ourselves, responds to “the true 
lovely will of our heart.” Our ingoing concentration is balanced 
by a great outgoing sense of expansion, of new worlds made 
ours, as we receive the inflow of its life. 

Delacroix has described with great subtlety the psycho- 
logical character of pure contemplation. 

“When contemplation appears,” he says: “(a) It produces 
a general condition of indifference, liberty, and peace, an 
elevation above the world, a sense of beatitude. The Subject 
ceases to perceive himself in the multiplicity and division 
of his general consciousness, He is raised above himself. A 
deeper and a purer soul substitutes itself for the normal self. 
(4) In this state, in which consciousness of I-hood and con- 
sciousness of the world disappear, the mystic is conscious of 
being in immediate relation with God Himself; of participating 
in Divinity. Contemplation installs a method of being and of 
knowing. Moreover, these two things tend at bottom to 
become one. The mystic has more and more the impression 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 395 


of being that which he knows, and of knowing that which he 
is.”t Temporally rising, in fact, to levels of freedom, he knows 
himself real, and therefore knows Reality. 

Now, the object of the mystic’s contemplation is le twas 
some aspect of the Infinite Life: of “God, the one Reality.” 
Hence, the enhancement of vitality which artists or other unself- 
conscious observers may receive from their communion with 
scattered manifestations of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, is in 
his case infinitely increased. His uniformly rapturous language 
is alone enough to prove this. In the contemplative act, his 
whole personality, directed by love and will, transcends the 
sense-world, casts off its fetters, and rises to freedom: becoming 
operative on those high levels where, says Tauler, “reason 
cannot come.” There it apprehends the supra-sensible by 
immediate contact, and knows itself to be in the presence of 
the “Supplier of true Life.” Such Contemplation—such attain- 
ment of the Absolute—is the who/e act of which the visions of 
poets, the intuition of philosophers, give us hints. 

It is a brief act. The very greatest of the contemplatives 
have been unable to sustain the brilliance of this awful vision 
for more than a very little while. “A flash,” “an instant,’ “the 
space of an Ave Maria,” they say. 

“My mind,” says St. Augustine, in his account of his first 
purely contemplative glimpse of the One Reality, “withdrew its 
thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradic- 
tory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that 
light was wherein it was bathed. ... And thus, with the flash 
of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of 7That Which 
fs. And then at last I saw Thy invisible things understood by 
means of the things that are made, but I could not sustain my 
gaze: my weakness was dashed back, and I was relegated to 
my ordinary experience, bearing with me only a loving memory, 
and as it were the fragrance of those desirable meats on the 
which as yet I was not able to feed.” 2 

This fragrance, as St. Augustine calls it, remains for ever 
with those who have thus been initiated, if only for a moment, 
into the atmosphere of the Real: and this—the immortal 
and indescribable memory of their communion with That 
Which Is—gives to their work the perfume of the “ Inviolate 


t «Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” p. 370. 2 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. xvii. 


396 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Rose,” and is the secret of its magic power. But they can 
never tell us in exact and human language what it was that 
they attained in their ecstatic flights towards the thought of 
God: their momentary mergence in the Absolute Life. 

“That Which Is,” says Augustine; “The One,” “the Sup- 
plier of true Life,” says Plotinus ; “the energetic Word,” says St, 
Bernard ; “ Eternal Light,” says Dante ; “the Abyss,” says Ruys- 
broeck ; “Pure Love,” says St. Catherine of Genoa—poor symbols 
of Perfection at the best. But, through and by these oblique 
utterances, they give us the far more valuable assurance that the 
Object of their discovery is one with the object of our quest. 

William James has well observed that ‘‘ineffability ”. and 
“noetic quality” are the constant characteristics of the con- 
templative experience. Those who have seen are quite con- 
vinced: those who have not seen, can never be told. There is 
no certitude to equal the mystic’s certitude: no impotence more 
complete than that which falls on those who try to communicate 
it. “Of these most excellent and divine workings in the soul, 
whereby God doth manifest Himself,” says Angela of Foligno, 
“ Man can in no wise speak or even stammer.”2 Over and over 
again, however, he has tried to speak : and the greater part of mys- 
tical literature is concerned with these attempts. Under a variety 
of images, by a deliberate exploitation of the musical and sug- 
gestive qualities of words—often, too, by the help of desperate 
paradoxes, those unfailing stimulants of man’s intuitive power 
—he tries to tell others somewhat of that veritable country 
which “eye hath not seen.” His success—partial though it be 
—can only be accounted for upon the supposition that some- 
where within us lurks a faculty which has known this country 
from its birth; which dwells in it, partakes of Pure Being, and 
can under certain conditions be stung to consciousness. Then 
“transcendental feeling,” waking from its sleep, acknowledges 
that these explorers of the Infinite have really gazed upon the 
secret plan. 

Now Contemplation is not, like meditation, one simple state, 
governed by one set of psychic conditions, It is a name for a 
large group of states, partly governed—like all other forms of 


t “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 380. 
? B. Angelae de Fulginio, ‘* Visionim et Instructionum Liber,’’ cap. xxvii. 
(English translation, p. 189). 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 397 


mystical activity—by the temperament ot the subject, and 
accompanied by feeling-states which vary from the extreme 
of quietude or “peace in life naughted” to the rapturous and 
active love in which “thought into song is turned.” Some 
kinds of Contemplation are inextricably entwined with the 
phenomena of “intellectual vision” and “inward voices.” In 
others we find what seems to be a development of the “ Quiet”: 
a state which the subject describes as a blank absorption, a 
darkness, or “contemplation 2 caligine.’ Sometimes the con- 
templative tells us that he passes through this darkness to the 
light :? sometimes it seems to him that he stays for ever in the 
“beneficent dark.”3 In some cases the soul says that even in 
the depths of her absorption, she “ knows her own bliss”: in 
others she only becomes aware of it when contemplation is over 
and the surface-intelligence reassumes the reins. 

In this welter of personal experiences, it becomes necessary 
to adopt some basis of classification, some rule by which to 
distinguish true Contemplation from other introversive states, 
Such a basis is not easy to find. I think, however, that there 
are two marks of the real condition: (A) Totality, and (B) 
Self-Mergence: and these we may safely use in our attempt 
to determine its character. 

(A) Whatever terms he may employ to describe it, and 
however faint or confused his perceptions may be, the mystic’s 
experience in Contemplation is the experience of the All. It is 
the Absolute which he has attained: not, as in meditation or 
vision, some partial symbol or aspect thereof. 

(B) This attainment is brought about, this knowledge gained, 
by way of participation, not by way of observation. The 
passive receptivity of the Quiet is here developed into an active, _ 
outgoing self-donation. A “give and take”—a divine osmosis — 
—is set up between the finite and the infinite life. Not only 
does the Absolute pour in on the self, but that self rushes out 
willingly to lose itself in it. That dreadful consciousness of a 
narrow and limiting I-hood which dogs our search for freedom 
and full life, is done away. For a moment, at least, the indepen- 
dent spiritual life is achieved. The contemplative is merged 


* Compare Baker, ‘* Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iv. cap. iv, 
2 See Hilton, ‘*‘ The Scale of Perfection,” bk. ii. cap. vi, 
3 Vide infra, p. 414. 


4 


398 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


in it “like a bird in the air, like a fish in the sea”: loses to find 
and dies to live. 

“We must,” says Dionysius the Areopagite, “contemplate 
things divine by our whole selves standing out of our whole 
selves ; becoming wholly of God.”! This is the “passive 
union” of Contemplation : a temporary condition in which the 
subject receives a double conviction of ineffable happiness and 
ultimate reality. He may try to translate this conviction into 
“ something said” or “something seen”: but in the end he will 
be found to confess that he can tell nothing, save by implication. 
The essential fact is that he was there: as the essential fact for 
the returning exile is neither landscape nor language, but the 
homely spirit of place. 

“ To see and to have seen that Vision,” says Plotinus in one 
of his finest passages, “is reason no longer. It is more than 
reason, before reason, and after reason, as also is the vision 
which is seen. And perhaps we should not here speak of szghi : 
for that which is seen—if we must needs speak of seer and seen 
as two and not one—is not discerned by the seer, nor perceived 
by him as a second thing. . .. Therefore this vision is hard to 
tell of : for how can a man describe as other than himself that 
which, when he discerned it, seemed not other, but one with 
himself indeed ?” 2 

Ruysbroeck, who continued in the mediaeval world the best 
traditions of Neoplatonic Mysticism, also describes a condition 
of supreme insight, a vision of Truth, obviously the same as 
that at which Plotinus hints. “Contemplation,” he says, “ places 
us in a purity and a radiance which is far above our under- 
standing ... and none can attain to it by knowledge, by 
subtlety, or by any exercise : but he whom God chooses to unite 
to Himself, and to illuminate by Himself, he and no other can 
contemplate God. ... But few men attain to this divine con- 
templation, because of our incapacity and of the hiddenness of 
that light wherein alone we can contemplate. And this is why 
none by his own knowledge, or by subtle examination, will ever 
really understand these things, For all words and all that one 
can learn or understand according to the mode of the creatures, 
are foreign to the truth that I have seen and far below it. But 

* “De Divinis Nominibus,” vii. 1. 
* Ennead vi. 9, 10. 





INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 399 


he who is united to God, and illumined by this truth—he can 
understand Truth by Truth.t 

This final, satisfying knowledge of reality—this under- 
standing of Truth by Truth—is, at bottom, that which all men 
desire. The saint’s thirst for God, the philosopher’s passion for 
the Absolute, is nothing else than this crying need of the spirit, 
variously expressed by the intellect and by the heart. The 
guesses of science, the diagrams of metaphysics, the intuitions - 
of artists; all are pressing towards this. Yet it is to be found 
of all in the kingdom of the contemplatives: that “little city 
set on an hill” which looks so small to those outside its gates. 

Man’s soul, says Hilton, “perceiveth full well that there is 
somewhat above itself that it knoweth not, nor hath not yet, 
but would have it, and burningly yearneth after it; and that is 
nought else than the sight of Jerusalem outwardly, which is like 
to a city which the Prophet Ezechiel saw in his visions. He 
saith that he saw a city upon a hill towards the south, that to 
his sight when it was measured was no more in length and 
breadth than a reed, that is six cubits and a palm of length. 
But as soon as he was brought into the city, and looked about 
him, then he saw that it was wondrous great, for he saw many 
halls, and chambers both open and secret; he saw gates and 
porches without and within, and many more buildings than I 
now speak of, and it was in length and breadth many hundred 
cubits, that it seemed a wonder to him that this city was so long 
and so large within, that seemed so little to his sight when he 
was without. This city betokeneth the perfect love of God set 
upon the hill of Contemplation, which to the sight of a soul 
that without the feeling of it travelleth in desire towards it 
seemeth somewhat, but it seemeth but a little thing, no more 
than a rood, that is six cubits and a palm in length. By six 
cubits are understood the perfection of man’s work; and by the 
palm, a little touch of Contemplation. He seeth well that there 
s such a thing that passeth the deservings of all the workings 
of man, like as a palm is surpassed by six cubits, but he seeth 
‘not within what it is; yet if he can come within the city of 
Contemplation, then seeth he much more than at first.” 2 

As in the case of vision, so here all that we who “ with- 


* Ruysbroeck, ‘* L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. iii. cap. i. 
2 -** Tne Seale of Perfection,” bk. ii. cap. vi. 


400 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


out the feeling travel in desire” can really know concerning 
Contemplation—its value for life, the knowledge it confers— 
must come from those who have “come within the city”: have, 
in the metaphor of Plotinus, “taken flight towards the Thought 
of God.” What, in effect, can they tell us about the knowledge 
of reality which they attained in that brief communion with 
the Absolute ? 

They tell us chiefly, when we come to collate their evidence, 
two apparently contradictory things. They speak, almost in 
the same breath, of an exceeding joy, a Beatific Vision, an 
intense communion, and a “loving sight” : and of an exceeding 
emptiness, a barren desert, an unfathomable Abyss, a nescience, 
a Divine Dark. 

Over and over again these two pairs of opposites occur in all 
first-hand descriptions of pure contemplation: Remoteness and 
Intimacy, Darkness and Light. Bearing in mind that these four 
groups of symbols all describe the same process seen “through 
a temperament,” and represent the reaction of that temperament 
upon Absolute Reality, we may perhaps by their comparison 
obtain some faint idea of the indescribable Somewhat at which 
they hint. 

Note first that the emotional accompaniments of his per- 
ceptions will always and necessarily be the stuff from which 
the mystic draws suggestive language by which to hint at his 
experience of supernal things. His descriptions will always 
lean to the impressionistic rather than to the scientific side. 
The “deep yet dazzling darkness,” the “ unfathomable abyss,” 
the Cloud of Unknowing, the “embrace of the Beloved,” all 
represent, not the Transcendent but his relation with the Tran- 
- scendent: not an object observed but an overwhelming impres- 
' sion felt, by the totality of his being during his communion with 
a Reality which is One. 

It is not fair, however, to regard Contemplation on this 
account as pre-eminently a “feeling state,” and hence attribute 
to it, as many modern writers do, a merely subjective validity. 
It is, of course, accompanied, as all humanity’s supreme and 
vital acts are accompanied, by feelings of an exalted kind: and 
since such emotions are the least abnormal part of it, they are 
the part which the subject finds easiest to describe. These 
elusive combinations of Fear, Amazement, Desire, and Joy are 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 401 


more or less familiar to him. The accidents of sensual life have 
developed them. His language contains words which are 
capable of suggesting them to other men. But his total 
experience transcends mere feeling, just as it transcends mere 
intellect. It is a complete act of perception, inexpressible by 
these departmental words: and its agent is the whole man, the 
indivisible personality whose powers and nature are only 
partially hinted at in such words as Love, Thought, or Will. 

The plane of consciousness, however—the objective some- 
_ what—of which this personality becomes aware in contempla- 
tion, is not familiar to it; neither is it related to its systems of 
thought. Man, accustomed to dwell amongst spatial images 
adapted to the needs of daily life, has no language that will fit . 
it at all. So, a person hearing for the first time some master- 
piece of classical music, would have no language in which to 
describe it objectively ; but could only tell us how it made him | 
feel. This is one reason why feeling-states seem to preponderate 
in all descriptions of the mystic act. Earthly emotions provide 
a parallel which enables the subject to tell us by implication 
something of that which he felt: but he cannot tell us—for 
want of standards of comparison—what it was that induced him 
thus to feel. His best efforts to fit words to this elusive some- 
what generally result in the evaporation alike of its fragrance 
and of its truth. As St. Augustine said of Time, he knows what > 
it is until he is asked to define it. 

How symbolic and temperamental is all verbal description 
of mystical activity, may be seen by the aspect which contempla- 
tion takes in the music-loving soul of Richard Rolle; who 
always found his closest parallels with Reality, not in the 
concepts of intimate union, or of self-loss in the Divine Abyss, 
but in the idea of the soul’s participation in a supernal harmony 
. —that sweet minstrelsy of God in which “thought into song is 
turned.” 

“To me,” he says, “it seems that contemplation is joyful 
song of God’s love taken in mind, with sweetness of angels’ — 
loving. This is jubilation, that is the end of perfect prayer and 
high devotion in this life. This is that mirth in mind, had 
ghostily by the lover everlastingly, with great voice out- 
breaking. . . . Contemplative sweetness not without full great 
labour is gotten, and with joy untold it is possessed. Forsooth, 

DD 


402 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


it is not man’s merit but God’s gift ; and yet from the beginning 
to this day never might man be ravished in contemplation of 
Love Everlasting, but if he before parfitely all the world’s vanity 
had forsaken.” ! 

We must, then, be prepared to accept, sift, and use many 
different descriptions of evoked emotion in the course of our 
enquiry into the nature of the contemplative’s perceptions of the 
- Absolute. We find on analysis that these evoked emotions 
separate themselves easily into two groups. Further, these two 
groups answer to the two directions in which the mystic 
consciousness of Reality is extended, and to the pairs of 
descriptions of the Godhead which we have found throughout 
to be characteristic of mystical literature: z.¢., the personal and 
spatial, immanental and transcendental, indwelling Life and 
Unconditioned Source; (@) the strange, dark, unfathomable 
Abyss of Pure Being always dwelt upon by mystics of the 
metaphysical type, and (4) the divine and loved Companion 
of the soul whose presence is so sharply felt by those selves 
which lean to the concept of Divine Personality. 

A. The Contemplation of Transcendence—The first group 
of feeling-states, allied to those which emphasize the 
theological idea of Divine Transcendence, is born of the 
mystic’s sense of his own littleness, unworthiness, and in- 
curable ignorance in comparison with the ineffable greatness 
of the Absolute Godhead which he has perceived, and in 
which he desires to lose himself: of the total and incom- 
municable difference zz £znd between the Divine and everything 
else. Awe and self-abasement and the paradoxical passion for 
self-loss in the All, here govern his emotional state. All 
affirmative statements seem to him blasphemous, so far are they 
from an ineffable truth which is “more than reason, before 
reason, and after reason.” To this group of feelings, which 
usually go with an instinctive taste for Neoplatonism, an icono- 
clastic distrust of personal imagery, we owe all negative 
descriptions of supreme Reality. For this type of self God 
is the Unconditioned, for whom we have no words, and whom 
all our poor symbols insult. To see Him is to enter the Dark- 
ness, the “ Cloud of Unknowing,” and “ know only that we know 
nought.” Nothing else can satisfy this exaggerated spiritual 


* Richard Rolle, ‘‘ The Mending of Life,” cap. xii. 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 403 


humility, which easily degenerates into that subtle form of 
pride which refuses to acquiesce in its own limitations. 

“There is none other God but He that none may know, 
which may not be known,” says this contemplative soul. “No, 
soothly, no! Without fail, No, says she. He only is my God 
that none can one word of say, nor all they of Paradise one 
only point attain nor understand, for all the knowing that they 
have of Him.” + | 

When they tried very hard to be geographically exact, to 
define and describe their apprehension of and contact with the 
Unconditioned One, who is the only Country of the Soul, 
contemplatives of this type became, like their great master the 
Areopagite, impersonal and remote. They seem to have been_ 
caught up to some measureless height, where the air is too 
rarefied for the lungs of common men. When we ask them the_ 
nature of the life on these summits, they are compelled as a rule 
to adopt the Dionysian concept of Divine Darkness, or the 
parallel idea of the fathomless Abyss, the Desert of the Godhead, 
the Eckhartian “still wilderness where no one is at home.” 

Oddly enough, it is in their language concerning this place 
or plane of reality, in which union with the Super-essential God- 
head takes place—this “lightsome darkness and rich nought ”— 
that they come nearer to distinct affirmation, and consequently 
offer more surprises to sentimental and popular piety, than in 
any other department of their work. Unquestionably this 
language, these amazing tidings of a “ still desert,” a “ vast sea,” 
an “unplumbed abyss” in which the “emptiness,” the “nothing,” 
the “ Dark” on which the self entered in the Orison of Quiet is 
infinitely increased, yet positive satisfaction is at last attained, 
does correspond with a definite psychological experience. It is 
not merely the convention of a school. These descriptions, 
- incoherent as they are, have a strange note of certainty, a stranger 
note of passion, an odd realism of their own: which mean, 
wherever we meet them, that experience not tradition is their 
source. 

_ Driven of necessity to a negation of all that their surface- 
minds have ever known—with language, strained to the 
uttermost, failing them at every turn—these contemplatives are 
still able to communicate to us a definite somewhat, news as to 


* “The Mirror of Simple Souls,” cap. iii. 


404 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


a given and actual Reality, an unchanging Absolute; and a 
beatific union with it, most veritably attained. They agree in 
their accounts of it, in a way which makes it obvious that all 
these reporters have sojourned in the same land, and experienced 
the same spiritual state. Moreover, our own inmost minds bear 
witness for them. We meet them half-way. We know in- 
stinctively and irrefutably that they tell true; and they rouse in 
us a passionate nostalgia, a bitter sense of exile and of loss. 

One and all, these explorers of the Infinite fly to language 
expressive of great and boundless spaces. In their withdrawal 
from the busy, fretful sense-world they have sunk down to the 
“round” of the soul and of the universe: Being, the Substance 
of all that Is. Multiplicity is resolved into Unity: a unity with 
which the perceiving self is merged. Thus the mystic, for the 
time of this “union with the Divine,” does find himself, in 
Tauler’s words, to be “ simply in God.” 

“ The great wastes to be found in this divine ground,” says 
that great master, “ have neither image nor form nor condition, 
for they are neither here nor there. They are like unto a 
fathomless Abyss, bottomless and floating in itself. Even as 
water ebbs and flows, up and down, now sinking into a hollow, 
so that it looks as if there were no water there, and then again 
in a little while rushing forth as if it would engulf everything, 
so does it come to pass in this Abyss. This, truly, is much 
more God’s Dwelling-place than heaven or man. A man who 
verily desires to enter will surely find God here, and himself 
simply in God; for God never separates Himself from this 
ground. God will be present with him, and he will find and 
enjoy Eternity here. There is no past nor present here, and 
no created light can reach unto or shine into this divine 
Ground; for here only is the dwelling-place of God and His 
sanctuary. 

“ Now this Divine Abyss can be fathomed by no creatures ; it 
can be filled by none, and it satisfies none; God only can fill it 
in His Infinity. For this abyss belongs only to the Divine 
Abyss, of which it is written: Adyssus abyssum invocat. He 
who is truly conscious of this ground, which shone into the 
powers of his soul, and lighted and inclined its lowest and 
highest powers to turn to their pure Source and true Origin, 
must diligently examine himself, and remain alone, listening to 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 405 


the voice which cries in the wilderness of this ground. This 
ground is so desert and bare, that no thought has-ever entered 
there. None of all the thoughts of man which, with the help of 
_ reason, have been devoted to meditation on the Holy Trinity 
(and some men have occupied themselves much with these . 
thoughts) have ever entered this ground. For it is so close and 
yet so far off, and so far beyond all things, that it has neither 
time nor place. It is a simple and unchanging condition. 
A man who really and truly enters, feels as though he had 
been here throughout eternity, and as though he were one 
therewith.” ! 

Many other mystics have written to the same effect: have 
described with splendour the ineffable joys and terrors of the 
Abyss of Being “where man existed in God from all Eternity,” 
the soul’s adventures when, “stripped of its very life,” it “sails 
the wild billows of the sea divine.” But their words merely 
amaze the outsider and give him little information. The con- 
templative self who has attained this strange country can only 
tell an astonished and incredulous world that here his greatest 
deprivation is also his greatest joy; that here the extremes of 
possession and surrender are the same, that ignorance and 
knowledge, light and dark, are One. Love has led him into that 
timeless, spaceless world of Being which is the peaceful ground, - 
not only of the individual striving spirit, but also of the striving 
universe ; and he can but cry with Philip, “/# zs enough.” | 

“Here,” says Maeterlinck, “we stand suddenly at the con- 
fines of human thought, and far beyond the Polar circle of the 
mind. It is intensely cold here; it is intensely dark; and yet 
you will find nothing but flames and light, But to those who , 
come without having trained their souls to these new per- - 
ceptions, this light and these flames are as dark and as cold as 
if they were painted. Here we are concerned with the most 
exact of sciences: with the exploration of the harshest and 
most uninhabitable headlands of the divine ‘Know thyself’: 
and the midnight sun reigns over that rolling sea where the © 
psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God.” 2 

On one hand “ flames and light”—the flame of living love 


* Tauler, Sermon on St. John the Baptist (‘* The Inner Way,” pp. 97-99). 
* Maeterlinck, Introduction to MRuysbroeck’s ‘‘ L’Ornement des Noces 
Spirituelles,”’ p. v, 


406 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


which fills the universe—on the other the “quiet desert of 
Godhead,” the Divine Dark. Under these two types, one 
affirmative, one negative, resumed in his most daring paradox, 
nearly the whole of man’s contemplative experience of the 
Absolute can be and is expressed. We have considered his 
negative description of Utmost Transcendence: that confession 
of “divine ignorance” which is a higher form of knowledge. | 
But this is balanced, in a few elect spirits, by a positive contem- 
plation of truth, an ecstatic apprehension of the “secret plan.” 

Certain rare mystics seem able to describe to us a Beatific 
Vision experienced here and now: a knowledge by contact of 
the Flaming Heart of Reality which includes in one great 
whole the planes of Being and Becoming, the “fixed point of 
Deity,” the Eternal Father, and His manifestation in the 
“energetic Word.” We saw something of this power, which is 
characteristic of mystical genius of a high order, when we 
studied the characteristics of Illumination. Its finest literary 
expression is found in that passage of the “ Paradiso” where 
Dante tells us how he pierced, for an instant, the secret of the 
Empyrean. Already he had enjoyed a symbolic vision of 
two-fold Reality, as the moving River of Light and the still 
white Rose.t Now these two aspects vanished, and he saw 
the One. 


‘*. , . la mia vista, venendo sincera, 
e pil e pill entrava per lo raggio 
dell’ alta luce, che da sé é vera. 
Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio 
che il parlar nostro ch’ a tal vista cede, 
e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio. 
Qual é colui che somniando vede, 
ché dopo il sogno la passione impressa 
rimane, e I altro alla mente non riede ; 
Cotal son io, ché quasi tutta cessa 
mia visione, ed ancor mi distilla 
nel cor lo dolce che nacque da essa. 


* * w * 


Io credo, per I’ acume ch’ io soffersi 
del vivo raggio, ch’ io sarei smarrito, 
se gli occhi miei da lui fossero aversi. 
E mi ricorda ch’ io fui pit ardito 
per questo a sostener tanto ch’ io giunsi 
P aspetto mio col Valor infinito. 
» » = * 


* Par. xxx. 61-128. Compare p. 343. 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 407 


Cosi la mente mia, tutta sospesa, 
mirava fissa, immobile ed attenta, 
e sempre del mirar faceasi accesa. 

A quella luce cotal si diventa, 
che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto 
é impossibil che mai si consenta. 


x 


Pero che il Ben, ch’ é del volere obbietto, 
tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella 
é difettevo cid che li’ é perfetto.” ? 


Intermediate between the Dantesque apprehension of Eter- 
nal Reality and the contemplative communion with Divine 
Personality, is the type of mystic whose perceptions of the 
supra-sensible are neither wholly personal nor wholly cosmic 
and transcendental] in type. To him, God is pre-eminently the 
Perfect—Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, Light, Life, and Love— 
discovered in a moment of lucidity at the very door of the 
seeking self. Here the symbols under which He is perceived 
are still the abstractions of philosophy : but in the hands of the 
mystic these terms cease to be abstract, are stung to life. 
Such contemplatives preserve the imageless and ineffable char- 
acter of the Absolute, but are moved by its contemplation toa 
joyous and personal love. 

Thus “ upon a certain time,” says Angela of Foligno, “ when 
I was at prayer and my spirit was exalted, God spake unto me 
many gracious words full of love. And when I looked I beheld 
God who spake with me. But if thou seekest to know that 
which I beheld, I can tell thee nothing, save that I beheld a 
fullness and a clearness, and felt them within me so abundantly 
that I can in no wise describe it, nor give any likeness thereof. 


* Par. xxxiil. 52-63, 76-81, 97-105. ‘‘ My vision, becoming purified, entered 
deeper and deeper into the ray o. that Supernal Light which in itself is true. 
Thenceforth my vision was greater than our language, which fails such a sight ; and 
memory too fails before such excess. As he who sees in a dream, and after the 
dream is gone the impression or emotion remains, but the rest returns not to the 
mind, such am I: for nearly the whole of my vision fades, and yet there still wells 
within my heart the sweetness born therefrom. . . . I think that by the keenness or 
the living ray which I endured I had been lost, had I once turned my eyes aside. 
And I remember that for this I was the bolder so long to sustain my!gaze, as to unite 
it with the Power Infinite. . . . Thus did my mind, wholly in suspense, gaze fixedly, 
immovable and intent, ever enkindled by its gazing. In the presence of that Light 
one becomes such, that never could one consent to turn from it to any other sight. 
Because the Good, which is the object of the will, is therein wholly gathered ; and 
outside of this, that is defective which therein is perfect.” 


408 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


For what I beheld was not corporal but as though it were in 
heaven. Thus I beheld a beauty so great that I can say nought 
concerning it, save that I saw the supreme Beauty which con- 
taineth within itself all of Good.” Again, “I beheld the in- 
effable fullness of God: but I can relate nothing of it, save that 
I have seen the plenitude of Divine Wisdom wherein is all 
Goodness,” ? 

B. The Contemplation of Immanence.—The second group of 
contemplatives is governed by that “Love which casteth out 
fear”: by a predominating sense of the nearness, intimacy, 
and sweetness, rather than the strangeness and unattainable 
transcendence of that same Infinite Life at whose being 
the first group could only hint by amazing images which 
seem to be borrowed from the poetry of metaphysics. 
They are, says Hilton, in a lovely image, “ Feelingly fed with 
the savour of His invisible blessed Face.”2 All the feelings 
which flow from joy, confidence, and affection, rather than those 
which are grouped about rapture and awe—though awe is 
always present in some measure, as it is always present in all 
perfect love—here contribute towards a description of the Truth. 

These contemplatives tell us of their attainment of That 
which Is, as the closest and most joyous of all communions; a 
coming of the Bridegroom; a rapturous immersion in the 
Uncreated Light. “Nothing more profitable, nothing merrier 
than grace of contemplation!” cries Rolle, “that lifts us from 
this low and offers to God. What is grace of contemplation but 
beginning of joy? what is parfiteness of joy but grace con- 
firmed ?” 3 

In such “bright contemplation ” as this, says the “ Mirror of 
Simple Souls,” “ the soul is full gladsome and jolly.” Utter peace 
and wild delight: every pleasure-state known to man’s normal 
consciousness, is inadequate to the description of her joy. 
She has participated for an instant in the Divine Life: knows. 
all, and knows nought. She has learnt the world’s secret, not 
by knowing, but by being: the only way of really knowing 
anything. 


’ B. Angelae de Fulginio, ‘‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,” caps. xxi. and 
xxiii. (English translation, pp. 169, 174). 

® ** The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. xi, 

3 ‘©The Mending of Life,” cap. xii, 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 409 


Where the dominant emotion is that of intimate affection : 
and where the training or disposition of the mystic inclines him 
to emphasize the personal and Incarnational rather than the 
abstract and Trinitarian side of Christianity, the contemplative 
of this type will always tend to describe his secret to us as 
above all things an experience of adorable Friendship. Reality 
is for him a Person, not a State. In the “orison of union” it 
seems to him that an absolute communion, a merging of his self 
with this other and strictly personal Self takes place. “God,” 
he says, then “meets the soul in her Ground”: ze, in that 
world of Pure Being to which, by divine right, she belongs, 
Clearly, the “degree of contemplation,” the psychological state, 
is here the same as that in which the mystic of the impersonal 
type attained the “Abyss.” But from the point of view of 
the subject this joyful and personal encounter of Lover and 
Beloved will be a very different experience from the soul’s 
immersion in that “desert of Deity,” as described by Eckhart 
and his school. “In this oning,” says Hilton, “consisteth the 
marriage which passeth betwixt God and the soul, that shall 
never be dissolved or broken.” ! 

St. Teresa is the classic example of this intimate and 
affective type of contemplation: but St. Gertrude, Suso, 
Julian, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and countless others, provide 
instances of its operation. We owe to it all the most beauti- 
ful and touching expressions of mystic love, 

Julian’s “I saw Him and sought Him: and I had Him, 
I wanted Him” expresses in epigram its combination of rap- 
turous attainment and insatiable desire: its apprehension of 
a Presence at once friendly and divine. So too does her 
description of the Tenth Revelation of Love when “ with this 
sweet enjoying He showed unto mine understanding in part 
the blessed Godhead, stirring then the poor soul to understand, 
as it may be said, that is, to think on the endless Love that 
was without beginning, and is, and shall be ever. And with 
this our good Lord said full blissfully, Zo, how that I loved 
thee, as if He had said, My darling, behold and see thy Lord, 
thy God that ts thy Maker, and thine endless joy.” 2 

“The eyes of my soul were opened,’ says Angela of 


* «©The Scale of Perfection,” bk. i. pt. i. cap. viii. 
* ** Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. xxiv, 


410 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Foligno, “and I beheld love advancing gently towards me, and 
I beheld the beginning but not the end. Unto me there 
seemed only a continuation and eternity thereof, so that I 
can describe neither likeness nor colour, but immediately 
that this love reached me, I did behold all these things more 
clearly with the eyes of the soul then I could do with the 
eyes of the body. This love came towards me after the 
manner of a sickle. Not that there was any actual and 
measurable likeness, but when first it appeared unto me it 
did not give itself unto me in such abundance as I expected, 
but part of it was withdrawn. Therefore do I say after the 
manner of a sickle. Then was I filled with love and 
inestimable satiety.” ? 

It is to Mechthild of Magdeburg, whose contemplation 
was emphatically of the intimate type, that we owe the most 
perfect definition of this communion of the mystic with his 
Friend. “Orison,” she says, “draws the great God down 
into the small heart: it drives the hungry soul out to the 
full God. It brings together the two lovers, God and the 
soul, into a joyful room where they speak much of love.” 2 

We have already seen that the doctrine of the Trinity 
makes it possible for Christian mystics, and, still more, for 
Christian mysticism as a whole, to reconcile this way of 
apprehending reality with the “negative” and impersonal 
perception of the ineffable One, the Absolute which “hath 
no image.” Though they seem in their extreme forms to be 
so sharply opposed as to justify Eckhart’s celebrated dis- 
tinction between the unknowable totality of the Godhead 
and the knowable personality of God, the “image” and the 
“circle” are yet aspects of one thing. Instinctive monists as 
they are, all the mystics feel—and the German school in 
particular have expressed—Dante’s conviction that these two 
aspects of reality, these two’ planes of being, however widely 
they seem to differ, are Oxe3 Both are ways of describing 
that Absolute Truth, “present yet absent, near, yet far,” that 
Triune Fact, az tre colort e ad una continenza, which is God. 
Both are necessary if we are to form any idea of that com- 


‘ B. Angelae de Fulginio, of. cét., cap. xxv. (English translation, p. 178). 
2 “Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt. v. cap. 13. 
3 Par. xxxiii. 137. 


INTROVERSION : CONTEMPLATION 411 


plete Reality: as, when two men go together to some 
undiscovered country, one will bring home news of its great 
spaces, its beauty of landscape, another of its geological 
formation, or the flora and fauna that express its life; and 
both must be taken into account before any just estimate 
of the real country can be made. 

Since it is of the essence of the Christian religion to 
combine personal and metaphysical truth, a transcendent 
and an immanent God, it is not surprising that we should 
find in Christianity a philosophic and theological basis for 
this paradox of the contemplative experience. Most often, 
though not always, the Christian mystic identifies the personal 
and intimate Lover of the soul, of whose elusive presence 
he is so sharply aware, with the person of Christ; the un- 
knowable and transcendent Godhead with that eterna luce, 
the Undifferentiated One in Whom the Trinity of Persons 
is resumed. 

Temperamentally, most practical contemplatives lean to 
either one or other of these apprehensions of Reality: to a 
personal and immanental meeting in the “ground of the 
soul,” or to the austere joys of the “naughted soul” abased 
before an impersonal Transcendence which no language but 
that of negation can define. In some, however, both types 
of perception seem to exist together: and they speak alter- 
natively of light and darkness, of the rapturous encounter 
with Love and of supreme self-loss in the naked Abyss; 
the desert of the essence of God. MRuysbroeck is the perfect 
example of this type of contemplative; and his works con- 
tain numerous and valuable passages descriptive of that 
synthetic experience which resumes the personal and tran- 
scendental aspects of the mystic fact. 

“When we have become Voyant,’ he says—that is to say, 
when we have attained to spiritual lucidity—“ we are able to 
contemplate in joy the eternal coming of the Bridegroom ; and 
this is the second point on which I would speak. What, then, 
is this eternal coming of our Bridegroom? It is a perpetual 
new birth and a perpetual new illumination: for the ground 
whence the Light shines and which is Itself. the Light, is living 
and fruitful: and hence the manifestation of the Eternal Light 


* Compare supra, Pt. I. Cap V, 


412 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


is renewed without interruption in the most secret part of our 
souls, Behold! all human works and active virtues are here 
transcended ; for God discloses Himself only at the apex of the 
soul. Here there is nought else but an eternal contemplation 
of, and dwelling upon the Light, by the Light and in the Light. 
And the coming of the Bridegroom is so swift, that He comes 
perpetually, and He dwells within us with His abysmal riches, 
and He returns to us as it were anew in His Person, with such 
new radiance, that He seems never to have come to us before, 
For His coming consists, outside all Time, in an Aternal Now, 
always welcomed with new desires and with new Joys. Behold! 
the delights and the joys which this Bridegroom brings in His 
coming are fathomless and limitless, for they are Himself: and 
this is why the eyes of the soul, by which the lover contemplates 
the Bridegroom, are opened so widely that they can never close 
again. ... Now this active meeting, and this loving embrace, 
are in their essence fruitive and unconditioned; for the infinite 
Undifferentiation of the Godhead is so dark and so naked of all 
image, that it conceals within itself all the divine qualities and 
works, all the properties of the Persons, in the all-enfolding 
richness of the Essential Unity, and forms a divine fruition in 


the Abyss of the Ineffable One. And here there is an over- 


passing fruition of, and an outflowing immersion in, the nudity 
of Pure Being; where all the Names of God, and all manifesta- 
tions, and all divine knowledge, which are reflected in the mirror 
of divine truth, are absorbed into the Ineffable Simplicity, the 


Absence of image and of knowledge. For in this limitless 


Abyss of Simplicity, all things are embraced in the bliss of 
_ fruition; but the Abyss itself remains uncomprehended, except 
by the Essential Unity. The Persons and all that which lives 


in God, must give place to this. For there is nought else here 
but an eternal rest, enwrapped as it were in the fruition of the 
immersion of love: and this is the Being, without image, that all 


interior souls have chosen above all other thing. This is the 
dim silence where all lovers lose-themselves,” * 

Here Ruysbroeck, beginning with a symbol of the Divine 
Personality as Bridegroom of the Soul, which would have been 
congenial to the mind of St. Catherine of Siena, ends upon the 


summits of Christian metaphysics ; with a description of the — 


* Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ L’Ornement des noces Spirituelles,” bk. iii. caps. iii. and vi. 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 413 


loving immersion of the self in that Unconditioned One who 
transcends the Persons of theology and beggars human speech. 
We seem to see him desperately clutching at words and similes 
which may, he hopes, give some hint of the soul’s fruition of 
Reality : its immeasurable difference in kind from the dreams 
and diagrams of anthropomorphic religion. His strange state- 


' ments in respect of this Divine Abyss are on a par with those 
which I have already quoted from the works of those other 


contemplatives, who, refusing to be led away by the emotional 
aspect. of their experience, have striven to tell us—as they 
thought—not merely what they felt but what they beheld. 
Ruysbroeck’s great mystical genius, however, the depth and 
wholeness of his intuition of Reality, does not allow him to be 
satisfied with a merely spatial or metaphysical description of 


‘the Godhead. The “active meeting” and the “ loving embrace” 


are, he sees, an integral part of the true contemplative act. In 
“the dim silence where lovers lose themselves,” a Person meets 
a person: and ¢hzs it is, not the philosophic Absolute, which 
“all interior souls have chosen above all other thing.” 

We must now look more closely at the method by which 
the contemplative attains to his unique communion with the 
Absolute Life: the kind of activity which seems to him to 
characterize his mergence with Reality. As we might expect, 
that activity, like its result, is of two kinds: personal and 
affirmative, impersonal and negative. It is obvious that where 
Divine Perfection is conceived as the soul’s companion, the 
Bridegroom, the Beloved, the method of approach will be very 
different from that which ends in the self’s immersion in the 
paradoxical splendour of the Abyss, the “ still wilderness where 
no one is at home.” It is all the difference between the prepa- 
rations for a wedding and for an expedition to the Arctic Seas. 
Hence we find, at one end of the scale, that extreme form of 
personal and intimate communion—the going forth of lover to 
beloved—which the mystics call “the orison of union”: and at 
the other end, the “dark contemplation,” by which alone selves 
of the transcendent and impersonal type claim that they draw 
near to the Unconditioned One. 

- Of the dim and ineffable contemplation of Unnameable 
Transcendence, the imageless absorption in the Absolute, 


Dionysius the Areopagite of course provides the classic 
, ‘ 4 


414 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 

example. It was he who gave to it the name of Divine 
Darkness: and all later mystics of this type borrow their 
language from him. His directions upon the subject are 
singularly explicit : his descriptions, like those of St. Augustine, 
glow with an exultant sense of a Reality attained, and which 
others may attain if they will but follow where he leads. 

“ As for thee, oh well beloved Timothy,” he says, “exercise 
thyself ceaselessly in mystical contemplation. Leave on one 
side the senses and the operations of the understanding, all 
that which is material and intellectual, all things which ave, and 
all things which ave not; and, with a supernatural flight, go and 
unite thyself as closely as possible with That which is above 
all essence and all idea. For it is only by means of this 
sincere, spontaneous, and entire surrender of thyself and all 
things, that thou shalt be able to precipitate thyself, free and 
unfettered, into the mysterious radiance of the Divine Dark.”! 
Again, “The Divine Dark is nought else but that inaccessible 
light wherein the Lord is said to dwell. Although it is invisible 
because of its dazzling splendours and unsearchable because of 
the abundance of its supernatural brightness, nevertheless, who- 
soever deserves to see and know God rests therein ; and, by the 
very fact that he neither sees nor knows, is truly z# that which 
surpasses all truth and all knowledge.” 2 

It has become a commonplace with writers on mysticism to 
say, that all subsequent contemplatives took from Dionysius 
this idea of “ Divine Darkness,” and entrance therein as the 
soul’s highest privilege: took it, so to speak, ready-made and 
on faith, and incorporated it in their tradition. But to argue thus 
is to forget that mystics are above all things practical people. 
They do not write for the purpose of handing on a philosophical 
scheme, but in order to describe something which they have 
themselves experienced ; something which they feel to be of 


* Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘‘ De Mystica Theologia,” i. 1. 
? Jbid., Letter to Dorothy the Deacon. This passage seems to be the source 
of Vaughan’s celebrated verse in ‘‘ The Night ”’— 


** There is in God, some say, 
A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here 
Say it is late and dusky because they 
See not all clear. 
O for that Night ! where I in Him 
Might live invisible and dim.” 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 415 


transcendent importance for humanity. If, therefore, they 
persist—and they do persist—in using this simile of “darkness” 
in describing their adventures in contemplation, it can only be 
because it fits the facts. No Hegelian needs to be told that we 
shall need the addition cf its opposite before we can hope to 
approach the truth: and it is exactly the opposite of this “dim 
ignorance” which is offered us by mystics of the “joyous” or 
“intimate” type, who find their supreme satisfaction in the 
positive experience of “union,” the “mystical marriage of the 
soul.” 

What, then, do those who use this image of the “dark” 
really mean by it? They mean this: that God in His abso- 
lute Reality is unknowable—is dark—to man’s intellect: which 
is, as Bergson has reminded us, adapted to very different pur- 
poses than those of divine intuition. When, under the spur of 
mystic love, the whole personality of man comes into contact 
with that Reality, it enters a plane of experience to which none 
of the categories of the intellect apply. Reason finds itself, in 
a very actual sense, “in the dark ”—immersed in the Cloud of 
Unknowing. This dimness and lostness of the mind, then, is a 
necessary part of the mystic’s ascent to the Absolute. That 
Absolute will not be “known of the heart” until we acknow- 
ledge that It is “unknown of the intellect”; and obey the 
Dionysian injunction to “leave the operations of the under- 
standing on one side.” The movement of the contemplative 
must be a movement of the whole man: he is to “ precipitate 
himself, free and unfettered,” into the bosom of Reality. Only 
when he has thus transcended sight and knowledge, can he be 
sure that he has also transcended the world with which they 
are competent to deal, and is zm that which surpasses all 
essence and all idea. 

‘*This is Love: to fly heavenward, 
To rend, every instant, a hundred veils. 
The first moment, to renounce life ; 
The last step, to fare without feet. 
To regard this world as invisible, 
Not to see what appears to oneself.” * 

This acknowledgment of our intellectual ignorance, this 
humble surrender is the entrance into the “Cloud of Unknow- 
ng”: the first step towards mystical knowledge of the Absolute. 

For Truth and Humility are full true sisters,” says Hilton, 


* Jalalu ’d Din, ‘‘ Selected Poems from the Divan,’’ p. 137. 


416 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


“fastened together in love and charity, and there is no distance 
of counsel betwixt them two.” ! 

“Thou askest me and sayest,” says the author of the “ Cloud 
of Unknowing,” “ How shall I think upon Himself and what 
is He? To this I cannot make thee other answer but thus: 
I wot not. 

“For thou hast brought me, with thy question, into that same 
darkness and cloud of unknowing that I would thou wert in 
thyself. For of all other creatures and their works and of God 
Himself a man may have fulhead of knowledge, and well of 
them think; but of God Himself can no man think, and there- 
fore I will leave all that I can think upon, and choose to my 
love that thing that I cannot think. And why? Because 
He may well be loved, but not thought on. By love he may 
be gotten and holden, but by thought never. ... Go up to- 
wards that thick Cloud of Unknowing with a sharp dart of 
longing love, and go not thence for anything that befall.”2 

So long, therefore, as the object of the mystic’s contem- 
plation is amenable to thought, is something which he can 
“know,” he may be quite sure that it is not the Absolute; but 
only a partial image or symbol of the Absolute. 

To find that final Reality, he must enter. into the “Cloud 
of Unknowing ”—must pass beyond the plane on which the 
intellect can work. 

“When I say darkness,’ says this same great mystic, “I 
mean thereby a lack of knowing. And therefore it is not 
called a cloud of the air, but a Cloud of Unknowing, that . is 
between thee and thy God.” 3 

The business of the contemplative, then, is to enter this 
cloud: the “good dark,” as Hilton calls it. The deliberate 
inhibition of thought which takes place in the “orison of 
quiet” is one of the ways in which this entrance is effected: 
intellectual surrender, or “self-naughting,” is another. He 
who, by dint of detachment and introversion, enters the 
“nothingness” or “ground of the soul,” enters also into the 
“Dark”: a statement which seems simple enough until we 
try to realize what it means. 


= « The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap, xiii. 
2 “The Cloud of Unknowing,” cap. vi. (B:M. Harl. 674.) 
3 Jbid., cap. iv. . 


ta ‘ 





INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 417 


“Oj where,” says the bewildered disciple in one of Boehme’s 
dialogues, “is this naked Ground of the Soul void of all Self? 
And how shall I come at the hidden centre, where God dwelleth 
and not man? Tell me plainly, loving Sir, where it is; and 
how it is to be found of me, and entered into? 

“ Master. There where the soul hath slain its own Will and 
willeth no more any Thing as from itself. ... 

“ Disceple. But how shall I comprehend it ? 

“ Master. If thou goest about to comprehend it, then it will 
fly away from thee; but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly up 
to it, then it will abide with thee, and become the Life of thy 
Life, and be natural to thee.” 4 

The author of the “Cloud of Unknowing” is particularly 
explicit as to the sense of dimness and confusion which over- 
whelms the self when it first enters this Dark; a proceeding 
which is analogous with that annihilation of thought in the inte- 
rests of passive receptivity which we have studied in the “ Quiet.” 

“The first time thou dost it,” he says of the neophyte’s 
first vague steps in contemplation, “thou findest but a dark- 
ness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing—to wit, a dark mist, 
which seemeth to be between thee and the light that thou 
aspirest to—and thou knowest naught saving that thou feelest 
in thy will a certain naked intent unto God, that is, a certain 
imperfect and bare intent (as it showeth at the first sight) 
to come to a thing, without convenient means to come to — 
the thing intended. This cloud (howsoever thou work) is 
evermore between thee and thy God, and letteth to thee, that 
thou mayest not see Him clearly by light of understanding 
in thy reason, nor feel Him by sweetness of love in thine 
affection. And therefore shape thyself to abide in this dark- 
ness so long as thou mayest, evermore crying after Him whom 
thou lovest, for if ever thou shalt feel Him or see Him (in 
such sort as He may be seen or felt in this life), it behoveth 
always to be in this cloud and darkness.” 2 

From the same century, but from a very different country 
and temperament, comes another testimony as to the supreme 
value of this dark contemplation of the Divine: this absorption, 


t Boehme, ‘‘ Three Dialogues of the Supersensual Life,” p 71. 
* “ The Cloud of Unknowing,” cap. iii. I have inserted the missing phrases from 
Collins’s text. 
EE 


418 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


beyond the span of thought or emotion, in the “substance of 
all that Is.” It is one of the most vivid and detailed accounts 
of this strange form of consciousness which we possess; and 
deserves to be compared carefully with the statements of “ The 
Cloud of Unknowing,” and of St. John of the Cross. We 
owe it to that remarkable personality, the Blessed Angela 
of Foligno, who was converted from a life of worldliness to 
become not only a Christian and a Franciscan, but also a 
Platonist. In it we seem to hear the voice of Plotinus speaking 
from the Vale of Spoleto. 

“There was a time,” she says, “when my soul was exalted 
to behold God with so much clearness that never before had 
I beheld Him so distinctly. But love did I not see here 
so fully, rather did I lose that which I had before and was 
left without love. Afterward did I see Him darkly, and this 
darkness was the greatest blessing that could be imagined, 
and no thought could conceive aught that would equal this. 
... And by that blessing (most certain, and including also that 
darkness) have I attained unto all my hope, and inasmuch 
as now I see clearly, I have all that I desired to have or to 
know. Here likewise do I see all Good; and seeing it, the 
soul cannot think that it will depart from it, or it from the 
Good, or that in future it must ever leave the Good. The 
sou! delighteth unspeakably therein, yet it beholdeth naught 
which can be related by the tongue or imagined in the heart. 
It seeth nothing, yet seeth all things, because it beholdeth this 
Good darkly—and the more darkly and secretly the Good 
is seen, the more certain is it, and excellent above all things. 
Wherefore is all other good which can be seen or imagined 
doubtless less than this, because all the rest is darkness. 
And even when the soul seeth the divine power, wisdom, and 
will of God (which I have seen most marvellously at other 
times), it is all less than this most certain Good. Because this 
is the whole, and those other things are but part of the 
whole. Another difference is, that albeit those other things 
are unspeakable yet they do bring great joy which is 
felt even in the body. But seen thus darkly, the Good 
bringeth no smile upon the lips, no fervour or devotion or 
love into the heart, for the body doth not tremble or become 
moved or distressed as it doth at other times. And the cause 





INTROVERSION : CONTEMPLATION 419 


thereof is, that the soul seeth, and not the body, which reposeth 
and sleepeth, and the tongue is made dumb and cannot speak. 
... Unto this most high power of beholding God ineffably 
through such great darkness was my spirit uplifted but three 
times and no more; and although I beheld Him countless 
times, and always darkly, yet never in such an high manner 
- and through such great darkness. . . . And tome it seemeth that 
I am fixed in the midst of It and that It draweth me unto 
Itself more than anything else the which I ever beheld, or 
any blessing I ever yet received, so there is nothing which can 
be compared unto It.” ! 

These words, and indeed the whole idea which lies at the 
bottom of “dark contemplation,” will perhaps be better under- 
stood in the light of Baron von Hiigel’s deeply significant saying: 
“ Souls loving God in His Infinite Individuality will necessarily 
love Him beyond their intellectual comprehension of Him; 
the element of devoted trust, of free self-donation to One 
fully known only through and in such an act, will thus remain 
to man for ever.”’2 Hence, the contemplative act, which is 
an act of loving and self-forgetting concentration upon the 
Divine—the outpouring of man’s little and finite personality 
towards the Absolute Personality of God—will, in so far as 
it transcends thought, mean darkness for the intellect; but 
it may mean radiance for the heart. Psychologically, it will 
mean the necessary depletion of the surface-consciousness, the 
stilling of the mechanism of thought, in the interests of another 
centre of consciousness. Since this new centre makes enormous 
demands on the self’s stock of vitality its establishment 
means, during the time that it is active, the withdrawal of 
energy from other centres. Thus the “night of thought” 
becomes the strictly logical corollary of the “light of perception.” 

No one has expressed this double character of the Divine 
Dark—its “nothingness” for the dissecting knife of reason, 
its supreme fruitfulness for expansive, active love—with so 
delicate an insight as St. John of the Cross. In his work the 
_Christian touch of personal rapture vivifies the exact and 
sometimes arid descriptions of the Neoplatonic mystics. A 


* B. Angelae de Fulginio, ‘‘ Visionum et Instructionum Liber’’ (English transla- 
_ tion, p. 181). 
2 “©The Mystical Element of Religion,’’ vol. ii. p. 257. 


420 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


great poet as well as a great mystic, in his poem on the 
“Obscure Night,” he brings to bear on this actual and ineffable 
experience of the introverted soul all the highest powers of 
artistic expression, all the resources of musical rhythm, the 
suggestive qualities of metaphor. 


‘‘ Upon an obscure night 
Fevered with Love’s anxiety 
(O hapless, happy plight !) 
I went, none seeing me, 
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be. 


By night, secure from sight 
And by a secret stair, disguisedly, 
(O hapless, happy plight !) 
By night, and privily 
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be. 


Blest night of wandering 
In secret, when by none might I be spied, 
Nor I see anything ; 
Without a light to guide 
Save that which in my heart burnt in my side. 


That light did lead me on, 
More surely than the shining of noontide 
Where well I knew that One 
Did for my coming bide ; 
Where He abode might none but He abide. 


O night that didst lead thus, 
O night more lovely than the dawn of light ; 
O night that broughtest us, 
- Lover to lover’s sight, 
Lover to loved, in marriage of delight ! 


Upon my flowery breast 
Wholly for Him and save Himself for none, 
There did I give sweet rest 
To my beloved one: 
The fanning of the cedars breathed thereon,’’? 


Observe in these verses the amazing fusion of personal 
and metaphysical imagery ; each contributing by its suggestive 
qualities to a total effect which conveys to us, we hardly 
know how, the obscure yet flaming rapture of the mystic, 


* “En una Noche Escura.” This translation, by Mr. Arthur Symons, will be 
found in vol. ii. of his Collected Poems. 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 421 


the affirmation of his burning love and the accompanying 
negation of his mental darkness and quiet—that “ hapless, 
happy plight.” All is here: the secrecy of the contemplative’s 
true life unseen of other men, his deliberate and active abandon- 
ment of the comfortable house of the senses, the dim, unknown 
plane of being into which his ardent spirit must plunge—a 
“night more lovely than the dawn of light”—the Inward 
Light, the fire of mystic love, which guides his footsteps “more 
surely than the shining of noon-tide: the self-giving ecstasy 
of the consummation “wholly for Him, and save Himself for 
none,” in which lover attains communion with Beloved “in 
marriage of delight.” 

In his book, “The Dark Night of the Soul,” St. John has 
commented upon the opening lines of this poem: and the 
passages in which he does this are amongst the finest and most 
subtle descriptions of the psychology of contemplation which 
we possess. 

“The soul,” he says, “calls the dim contemplation, by which 
it goes forth to the union of love, a secret stair; and that 
because of two properties of it which I am going to explain. 
First, this dark contemplation is called secret, because it is, 
as I have said before, the mystical theology which theologians 
call secret wisdom, and which according to St. Thomas is 
infused into the soul more especially by love. This happens in 
a secret hidden way, in which the natural operations of the 
understanding have no share. . . . Moreover, the soul has no 
wish to speak of it ; and beside, it can discover no way or proper 
similitude to describe it by, so as to make known a knowledge 
so high, a spzretual tmpression so delicate and infused. Yea, and 
if it could have a wish to speak of it, and find terms to describe 
it, it would always remain secret still. Because this interior 
wisdom is so simple, general, and spiritual, that it enters not 
into the understanding under any form or image subject to 
sense, as is sometimes the case ; the imagination, therefore, and 
the senses—as it has not entered in by them, nor is modified by 
them—cannot account for it, nor form any conception of it, 
so as to speak in any degree correctly about it, though the soul 
be distinctly conscious that it feels and tastes this strange 
wisdom. The soul is like a man who sees an object for the 
first time, the like of which he has never seen before; he 


422 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


handles it and feels it, yet he cannot say what it is, nor tell 
its name, do what he can, though it be at the same time an 
object cognisable by the senses. How much less, then, can 
that be described, which does not enter in by the senses... . 
This is not the only reason why it is called secret and why it 
is so. There is another, namely, the mystical wisdom has the 
property of hiding the soul within itself. For beside its ordinary 
operation, it sometimes so absorbs the soul and plunges it 
in this secret abyss that the soul sees itself distinctly as far 
away from, and abandoned by, all created things ; it looks upon 
itself as one that is placed in a wild and vast solitude whither 
no human being can come, as in an immense wilderness without 
limits ; a wilderness the more delicious, sweet, and lovely, the 
more it is wide, vast, and lonely, where the soul is the more 
hidden, the more it is raised up above all created things. 

“This abyss of wisdom now so exalts and elevates the soul— 
orderly disposing it for the science of love—that it makes it not 
only understand how mean are all created things in relation 
to the supreme wisdom and divine knowledge, but also how 
low, defective, and, in a certain sense, improper, are all the 
words and phrases by which in this life we discuss divine 
things; and how utterly impossible it is by any natural means, 
however profoundly and learnedly we may speak, to under- 
stand and see them as they are, except in the light of mystical 
theology. And so the soul in the light thereof discerning this 
truth, namely, that it cannot reach it, and still less explain it, by 
the terms of ordinary speech, justly calls it Secret.” ! 

In this important passage we have a reconciliation of the 
four chief images under which contemplation has _ been 
described: the darkness and the light, the wilderness and the 
union of love. That is to say, the selfs paradoxical feeling 
of an ignorance which is supreme knowledge, and of solitude 
which is intimate companionship. On the last of these anti- 
theses, the “ wilderness that is more delicious, sweet, and lovely, 


™ St. John of the Cross, ‘‘Noche Escura del Alma,” lI. ii. cap. xvii. (Lewis's 
translation). It is perhaps advisable to warn the reader that in this work St. John 
applies the image of ‘‘darkness” to three absolutely different things: 2.¢., to a 
form of purgation, which he calls the ‘‘ night of sense”; to dim contemplation, or 
the Dionysian ‘‘ Divine Dark ” ; and to the true ‘‘ dark night of the soul,” which he 
calls the “night of the spirit.” The result has been a good deal of confusion, 
in modern writers on mysticism, upon the subject of the ‘‘ Dark Night.” 


INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 423 


the more it is wide, vast, and lonely,” I cannot resist quoting, 
as a gloss upon the dignified language of the Spanish mystic, 
the quaint and simple words of Richard Rolle. 

“In the wilderness . . . speaks the loved to the heart of the 
lover ; as it were a bashful lover, that his sweetheart before men 
entreats not, nor friendly-wise but commonly and as a stranger 
he’ kisses. A devout soul safely from worldly business in mind 
and body departed. ..anon comes heavenly joy, and it 
marvellously making merry melody, to it springs whose token 
it takes, that now forward worldly sound gladly it suffers not. 
This is ghostly music, that is unknown to all that with worldly 
business lawful or unlawful are occupied. No man there is 
that this has nl but he that has studied to God only to 
take heed.” ! 

Doubtless the “dark transcendence” reported and dwelt 
upon by all mystics of the Dionysian type, is nearest the 
truth of all our apprehensions of God :? though it can be true 
only in the paradoxical sense that it uses the suggestive 
qualities of negation—the Dark whose very existence involves 
that of Light—to hint at the infinite Affirmation of All that 
Is. But the nearer this language is to the Absolute, the further 
it is from ourselves. Unless care be taken in the use of it, the 
absence of falsehood may easily involve for us the absence of . 
everything else. Man is not yet pure spirit, has not attained 
the Eternal. He is zz vza, and will never arrive if impatient 
amateurs of Reality insist on cutting the ground from under — 
his feet. Like Dante, he needs a ladder to the stars, a ladder © 
which goes the whole way from the human to the divine. 
Therefore the philosophic exactitude of these descriptions — 
of the dark must be balanced, as they are in St. John of the © 
Cross, by the personal, human, and symbolic affirmations of 
Love, if we would avoid a distorted notion of the Reality which . 
the contemplative attains in his supreme “ flights towards God.” 
Consciousness has got to be helped across the gap which 
separates it from its Home. 

The “ wilderness,” the dread Abyss, must be made homely 
by the voice of “the lover that His sweetheart before men 
entreats not.” Approximate as we know such an image of our 


* ** The Fire of Love,” bk. ii. cap. vii. 
2 Compare Baker, ‘‘ Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iv. cap. iv. 


424 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


communion with the Absolute to be, it represents a real aspect 
of the contemplative experience which eludes the rule and 
compass of metaphysical thought. Blake, with true mystic 
insight, summed up the situation as between the two extreme 
forms of contemplation when he wrote :—? 


*€God appears, and God is Light 
To those poor souls who dwell in night: 
But doth a human form display 
To those who dwell in realms of day.” 


In the “orison of union” and the “Spiritual Marriage,” 
those contemplatives whose temperament inclines them to 
“dwell in realms of day” receive just such a revelation of the 
“human form”—a revelation which the Christian dogma of 
the Incarnation brings to a point. They apprehend the per- 
sonal and passionate aspect of the Infinite Life ; and the love, at 
once intimate and expansive, all-demanding and all-renouncing, 
which plays like lightning between it and the desirous soul. 
“Thou saidst to me, my only Love, that Thou didst will to 
make me Thyself; and that Thou wast all mine, with all that 
Thou hadst and with all Paradise, and that I was all Thine. 
That I should leave all, or rather the nothing ; and that (then) 
Thou wouldst give me the all. And that Thou hadst given 
me this name—at which words I heard within me ‘dedi te in 
lucem gentium’—not without good reason. And it seemed 
then, as though I had an inclination for nothing except the 
purest Union, without any means, in accordance with that 
detailed sight which Thou hadst given me. So then I said 
to Thee: These other things, give them to whom Thou wilt ; 
give me but this most pure Union with Thee, free from every 
means.” 2 

“Our work is the love of God,” cries Ruysbroeck. “Our 
satisfaction lies in submission to the Divine Embrace.” This 
utter and abrupt submission to the Divine Embrace is the 
essence of that form of contemplation which is called the 
Orison of Union. “Surrender” is its secret: a personal sur- 
render, not only of finite to Infinite, but of bride to Bride- 


t “€ Auguries of Innocence.” 
? Colloquies of Battista Vernazza: quoted by Von Hligel, ‘‘The Mystical 
Element of Religion,” vol. i. p. 350. 





INTROVERSION: CONTEMPLATION 425 


groom, heart to Heart. This surrender, in contemplatives of 
an appropriate temperament, is of so complete and ecstatic a 
type that it involves a more or less complete suspension of 
normal consciousness, an entrancement; and often crosses 
the boundary which separates contemplation from true ecstasy, 
producing in its subject physical as well as psychical effects. In 
this state, says St. Teresa, “ There is no sense of anything: only 
fruition, without understanding what that may be the fruition 


of which is granted. It is understood that the fruition is of 
_acertain good, containing in itself all good together at once ; 
_ but this good is not comprehended. The senses are all occu- 


pied in this fruition in such a way, that not one of them is at 
liberty so as to be able to attend to anything else, whether 
outward or inward. ... But this state of complete absorption, 
together with the utter rest of the imagination—for I believe 
that the imagination is then wholly at rest—lasts only for a 
short time; though the faculties do not so completely recover 
themselves as not to be for some hours afterwards as if in 
disorder. .. . He who has had experience of this will under- 
stand it in some measure, for it cannot be more clearly 
described, because what then takes place is so obscure. All 
I am able to say is, that the soul is represented as being close 
to God; and that there abides a conviction thereof so certain 
and strong that it cannot possibly help believing so. All the 
faculties fail now, and are suspended in such a way that, as 
I said before, their operations cannot be traced. ... The wil’ 
must be fully occupied in loving, but it understands not how 
it loves ; the understanding, if it understands, does not under- 
stand how it understands. It does not understand, as it seems 
to me, because, as I said just now, this is a matter which 
cannot be understood.”! Clearly, the psychological situation 
here is the same as that in which mystics of the impersonal 
type feel themselves to be involved in the Cloud of Unknowing, 
or Divine Dark. 

“Do not imagine,” says Teresa in another place, “that this 
orison, like that which went before [z.e, the quiet] is a sort of 
drowsiness: I say drowsiness, because in the orison of divine 
savours or of quiet it seemed that the soul was neither 
thoroughly asleep, nor thoroughly awake, but that it dozed. 


* Vida, cap. xviii. §§ 2, 17, 19. 


426 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Here, on the contrary, the soul is asleep; entirely asleep as 
regards herself and earthly things. During the short time that 
union lasts she is, as it were, deprived of all feeling, and though 
she wishes it, she can think of nothing. Thus she needs no 
effort in order to suspend the action of her intellect or even 
the action of love ... she is, as it were, absolutely dead to 
things of the world, the better to live in God.” 

It may be asked, in what way does such contemplation 
as this differ from unconsciousness. The difference, according 
to St. Teresa, consists in the definite somewhat which takes 
place during this inhibition of the surface-consciousness: a 

somewhat” of which that surface-consciousness becomes 
aware when it awakes. Work has been done during this period 
of apparent passivity. The deeper self has escaped, has risen 
to freedom, and brings back tidings of the place to which it 
has been. We must remember that Teresa is here speaking 
from experience, and that her temperamental peculiarities will 
modify the form which this experience takes. “The soul,” she 
says, “neither sees, hears, nor understands whilst she is united 
to God; but this time is usually very short, and seems to 
be even shorter than it is. God establishes Himself in the 
interior of this soul in such a way that, when she comes to 
herself, 2¢ 2s zmtposszble for her to doubt that she has been in Goa 
and God in her, and this truth has left in her so deep an 
impression that, though she passed several years without being 
again raised to this state, she could neither forget the favour 
she received nor doubt its reality... . But you will say, how 
can the soul see and comprehend that she is in God and God 
in her, if during this union she is not able either to see or 
understand? I reply, that then she does not see it, but that 
afterwards she sees it clearly: not by a vision, but by a certi- 
tude which rests with her, and which God alone can give.” ! 


* €¢ FI Castillo Interior,” Moradas Quintas, cap. i. 


CHAPTER VIII 
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 


Ecstasy is the last term of Contemplation—Mystics regard it as a very favourable 
state—Its physical aspect—The trance—an abnormal bodily state—Healthy and 
unhealthy trances—their characteristics—St. Catherine of Genoa—Psychological 
aspect of ecstasy—Complete mono-ideism—A temporary unification of consciousness 
—Often helped by symbols—St. Catherine of Siena—Description of healthy ecstasy— 
It entails a new perception of Reality—Mystical aspect of Ecstasy—a state of ‘‘ Pure 
Apprehension ’’—the completion of the Orison of Union—Sometimes hard to dis- 
tinguish from it—The real distinction is in entrancement—St. Teresa on union and 
ecstasy—-Results of ecstasy confirm those of contemplation—no sharp line possible 
between the two—Many cases cannot be classified—Rolle on two forms of Rapture— 
The mystic in ecstasy claims that he attains the Absolute—The nature of his con- 
sciousness—a concentration of his whole being on one act—A perception of Eternity 
—Suso—the Neoplatonists—Plotinus—Self-mergence—Jacopone da Todi—Ecstatic 
vision—Rapture—its distinction from Ecstasy—it indicates psycho-physical dis- 
harmony—St. Teresa on Rapture—Levitation—Rapture always entails bodily 
immobility—generally mental disorder—Its final result good for life—Ecstatic states 
contribute to the organic development of the self 


duction of that state of intimate communion in which the 

mystics declare that the self is “in God and God is in 
her,” it might be supposed that the orison of union repre- 
sented the end of mystical activity, in so far as it is concerned 
with the attainment of a transitory but exalted consciousness 
of “oneness with the Absolute.’ Nearly all the great con- 
templatives, however, describe as a distinct, and regard as a 
more advanced phase of the spiritual consciousness, the group 
of definitely ecstatic states in which the concentration of in- 
terest on the Transcendent is so complete, the gathering up 
and pouring out of life on this one point so intense, that the 
subject is entranced, and becomes, for the time of the ecstasy, 
wholly unconscious of the external world. In pure contempla- 


tion he refused to attend to that external world: it was there, 
427 


G sci the primal object of all contemplation is the pro- 


428 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


a blurred image, at the fringe of his conscious field, but he 
deliberately left it on one side. In ecstasy he cannot attend 
to it. None of its messages reach him: not even those most 
insistent of all messages which are translated into the terms 
of bodily pain. 

Mystics of all ages have agreed in regarding such ecstasy as. 
an exceptionally favourable state; the one in which man’s 
spirit is caught up to its most immediate vision of the divine. 
The word has become a synonym for joyous exaltation, for 
the inebriation of the Infinite. The induced ecstasies of the 
Dionysian mysteries, the metaphysical raptures of the Neo- 
platonists, the voluntary or involuntary trance of Indian 
mystics and Christian saints—all these, however widely they 
may differ in transcendental value, agree in claiming such 
value, in declaring that this change in the quality of their 
consciousness brought with it an expansive and unforgettable 
apprehension of the Real. 

Clearly, this apprehension will vary with the place of the 
subject in the spiritual scale. The ecstasy is simply the 
psycho-physical agent by which it is obtained. “It is hardly 
a paradox to say,” says Myers, “that the evidence for ecstasy 
is stronger than the evidence for any other religious belief. Of 
all the subjective experiences of religion, ecstasy is that which 
has been most urgently, perhaps to the psychologist most con- 
vincingly asserted ; and it is not confined to any one religion, 
From the medicine man of the lowest savages up to 
St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul, with Buddha and Mahomet 
on the way, we find records which, though morally and in- 
tellectually much differing, are in psychological essence 
the same.” ! 

There are three distinct aspects under which the ecstatic 
state may be studied: (a) the physical, (0) the psychological, 
(c) the mystical. Many of the deplorable misunderstandings 
and still more deplorable mutual recriminations which surround 
its discussion come from the refusal of experts in one of 
these three branches to consider the results arrived at by 
the other two. 

A. Physically considered, Ecstasy is a trance; more or less 
deep, more or less prolonged. The subject may slide into it 


* <¢F{uman Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death,” vol. ii. p. 260. 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 429 


gradually from a period of absorption in, or contemplation of, 
some idea which has filled the field of consciousness : or, it may 
come on suddenly, the appearance of the idea—or even some 
word or symbol suggesting the idea—abruptly throwing the 
subject into an entranced condition. This is the state which 
mystical writers call Rapture. The distinction, however, is 
a conventional one: and the works of the mystics describe 
many intermediate forms. 

During the trance, breathing and circulation are depressed. 
The body is more or less cold and rigid, remaining in the exact 
position which it occupied at the oncoming of the ecstasy, 
however difficult and unnatural this pose may be. Sometimes 
entrancement is so deep that there is complete anzsthesia, as 
in the case which I quote from the life of St. Catherine of Siena.' 
Credible witnesses report that Bernadette, the visionary of 
Lourdes, held the flaming end of a candle in her hand for 
fifteen minutes during one of her ecstasies. She felt no pain, 
neither did the flesh show any marks of burning. Similar in- 
stances of ecstatic anesthesia abound in the lives of the saints.? 

The trance includes, according to the testimony of the 
ecstatics, two distinct phases—(a) the short period of lucidity 
and (4) a longer period of complete unconsciousness, which 
may pass into a death-like catalepsy, lasting for hours; or, 
as once with St. Teresa, for days. “The difference between 
union and trance,” says Teresa, “is this: that the latter lasts 
longer and is more visible outwardly, because the breathing 
gradually diminishes, so that it becomes impossible to speak 
or to open the eyes. And though this very thing occurs when 
the soul is in union, there is more violence in a trance; for the 
natural warmth vanishes, I know not how, when the rapture is 
deep, and in all these kinds of orison there is more or less of 
this. When it is deep, as I was saying, the hands become cold 
and sometimes stiff and straight as pieces of wood; as to the 
body, if the rapture comes on when it is standing or kneeling 
it remains so; and the soul is so full of the joy of that which 
Our Lord is setting before it, that it seems to forget to animate 
the body and abandons it. If the rapture lasts, the nerves are 
made to feel it.” 3 

t Vide infra, p. 435- 


2 An interesting modern case is reported in the Zance?, 18 March, 1911. 
3 Relaccion viii. 8. 


430 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Such ecstasy as this, so far as its merely physical symptoms 
go, is not of course the peculiar privilege of the mystics. It is 
an abnormal bodily state, caused by a psychic state: and this 
causal psychic state may be healthy or unhealthy, the result of 
genius or disease. It is common in the strange and little 
understood type of personality called “sensitive” or medium- 
istic: it is a well-known symptom of certain mental and nervous 
illnesses. A feeble mind concentrated on one idea—like a 
hypnotic subject gazing at one spot—easily becomes entranced ; 
however trivial the idea which gained possession of his con- 
sciousness. Taken alone then, and apart from its content, 
ecstasy carries no guarantee of spiritual value. It merely 
indicates the presence of certain abnormal psycho-physical 
conditions: an alteration of the normal equilibrium, a shifting 
of the threshold of consciousness, which leaves the body, and the 
whole usual “external world” outside instead of inside the 
conscious field, and even affects those physical functions—such 
as breathing—which are almost entirely automatic. Thus 
ecstasy, physically considered, may occur in any person in 
whom (1) the threshold of consciousness is exceptionally mobile 
and (2) there is a tendency to dwell upon one governing idea or 
intuition. Its worth depends entirely on the objective worth of 
that idea or intuition. 

In the hysterical patient, thanks to an unhealthy condition 
of the centres of consciousness, any trivial or irrational idea, any 
one of the odds and ends stored up in the subliminal region, 
may thus become fixed, dominate the mind, and produce 
entrancement. Such ecstasy is an illness: the emphasis is 
on the pathological state which makes it possible. In the 
mystic, the idea which fills his life is so great a one—the 
idea of God—that, in proportion as it is vivid, real, and intimate, 
it inevitably tends to monopolize the field of consciousness. 
His ecstasy is an expression of this fact: and here the emphasis 
is on the overpowering strength of spirit, not on the feeble and 
unhealthy state of body or mind.t This true ecstasy, says 

™ St. Thomas proves ecstasies to be inevitable on just this psychological ground. | 
‘The higher our mind is’ raised to the contemplation of spiritual things,” he says, 
‘‘the more it is abstracted from sensible things. But the final term to which contem- 
plation can possibly arrive is the divine substance. Therefore the mind that sees the 


divine substance must be totally divorced from the bodily senses, either by death or dy 
some rapture” (‘Summa Contra Gentiles,’’ ]. iii. cap. xlvii., Rickaby’s translation). 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 431 


Godfernaux, is not a malady, but “the extreme form of a state 
which must be classed amongst the ordinary accidents of con- 
scious life.” 1 

The mystics themselves are fully aware of the import- 
ance of this distinction... Ecstasies, no less than visions and 
voices, must, they declare, be subjected to unsparing criticism 
before they are recognized as divine: whereas some are 
undoubtedly “of God,” others are no less clearly “of the 
devil.” 

“The great doctors of the mystic life,’ says Malaval, 
“teach that there are two sorts of rapture which must be care- 
fully distinguished. The first are produced in persons but 
little advanced in the Way, and still full of selfhood; either by 
the force of a heated imagination which vividly apprehends a 
sensible object, or by the artifice of the Devil. These are the 
raptures which St. Teresa calls, in various parts of her works, 
Raptures of Feminine Weakness. The other sort of Rapture 
is, on the contrary, the effect of pure intellectual vision in those 
who have a great and generous love for God. To generous 
souls who have utterly renounced themselves, God never fails 
in these raptures to communicate high things.” 2 

All the mystics agree with Malaval in finding the test of a 
true ecstasy, not in its outward sign, but in its inward grace, its 
after-value: and here psychological science would be well 
advised to follow their example. The ecstatic states, which are 
supreme instances of the close connexion between body and 
soul, have bodily as well as mental results: and those results 
are as different and as characteristic as those observed in 
healthy and in morbid organic processes. If the concentration 
has been upon the highest centre of consciousness, the organ 
of spiritual perception—if a door has really been opened by 
which the self has escaped for an instant to the vision of 
That Which Is—the ecstasy will be good for life. The en- 
trancement of disease, on the contrary, is always bad for life. 
Its concentration being upon the lower instead of the higher 
levels of mentality, it depresses rather than enhances the 
vitality, the fervour, or the intelligence of its subject: and 
leaves behind it an enfeebled will, and often moral and 


t ¢¢ Sur la Psychologie du Mysticisme” (Revue Phzlosophique, February, 1902), 
? Malaval, ‘ La Pratique de la Vraye Theéologie Mystique,” vol. i. p. 89. 


432 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


intellectual chaos:! “ Ecstasies that do not produce consider- 
able profit either to the persons themselves or others, deserve 
to be suspected,” says Augustine Baker, “and when any marks 
of their approaching are perceived the persons ought to divert 
their minds some other way.’2 It is all the difference be- 
tween a healthy appetite for nourishing food and a morbid 
craving for garbage. The same organs of digestion are used in 
satisfying both: yet he would be a hardy physiologist who 
undertook to discredit all nutrition by a reference to its 
degenerate forms. 

Sometimes both kinds of ecstasy, the healthy and the 
psychopathic, are seen in the same person. Thus in the 
cases of St. Catherine of Genoa and St. Catherine of Siena it 
would seem that as their health became feebler and the nervous 
instability always found in persons of genius increased, their 
ecstasies became more frequent; but these were not healthy 
ecstasies, such as those which they experienced in the earlier 
stages of their careers, and which brought with them an access 


of vitality. They were the results of the increasing weakness — 
of the body, not of the overpowering strength of the spirit: — 


and there is evidence that Catherine of Genoa, that acute 


self-critic, was conscious of this fact. ‘“ Those who attended on — 
her did not know how to distinguish one state from the other. . 
And hence on coming to, she would sometimes say, “ Why did © 
you let me remain in this quietude, from which I have almost 


died ?’3 


Her earlier ecstasies were very different from this. They — 


had in a high degree the positive character of exaltation and 


life-enhancement consequent upon extreme concentration on — 


the Absolute; as well as the merely negative character of 
- annihilation of the surface-consciousness. She came from 
them with renewed health and strength, as from a resting in 
heavenly places and a feeding on heavenly food: and side by 
side with this ecstatic life fulfilled the innumerable duties of 
her active profession as hospital matron and spiritual mother of 
a large group of disciples. “Many times,” says her legend, 


* Pierre Janet (‘‘ The Major Symptoms of Hysteria,” p. 316) says that a lowering 
of the mental level is an invariable symptom or ‘‘ stigma "’ of hysteria. 

2 ** Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iv. cap, iil. 

3 Von Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element of Religion,” vol. i. p. 206. 


\ 
‘ 
a 





ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 433 


“she would hide herself in some secret place and there stay: 
and being sought she was found upon the ground, her face 
hidden in her hands,. altogether beyond herself, in such a 
state of joy as is beyond thought or speech: and being called 
—yea, even in a loud voice—she heard not. And at other 
times she would go up and down: ... as if beyond herself, 
drawn by the impulse of love, she did this. And certain other 
times she remained for the space of six hours as if dead: but 
hearing herself called, suddenly she got up, and answering she 
would at once go about all that needed to be done, even the 
humblest things.t And in thus leaving the All, she went 
without any grief, because she fled all selfhood [la proprieta] 
as if it were the devil. And when she came forth from her 
hiding-place, her face was rosy as it might be a cherub’s; and © 
it seemed as if she might have said,‘ Who shall separate me 
from the love of God?’”? “Very often,’ says St. Teresa, 
describing the results of such rapturous communion with © 
Pure Love as that from which St. Catherine came joyous and 
rosy-faced, “‘ he who was before sickly and full of pain comes 
forth healthy and even with new strength: for it is something 
great that is given to the soul in rapture.” 3 

B. Psychologically considered, all ecstasy is a form—the 
most perfect form—of the state which is technically called 
“complete mono-ideism.” That withdrawal of consciousness 
from circumference to ceritre, that deliberate attention to one 
thing, which we discussed in Recollection, is here pushed— 
voluntarily or involuntarily—to its logical conclusion. It is ~ 
(1) always paid for by psycho-physical disturbances ; (2) re- 
warded in healthy cases by an enormous lucidity, a supreme 
intuition in regard to the one thing on which the self’s interest 
has been set. 

Such ecstasy, then, is an extremely exalted form of con- 
templation, and might be expected to develop naturally from 
that state. “A simple difference of degree,’ says Maury, 
“separates ecstasy from the action of forcibly fixing an idea 


* This power of detecting and hearing the call of duty though she was deaf to 
everything else is evidently related to the peculiarity noticed by Ribot; who says 
that an ecstatic hears no scunds, save, in some cases, the voice of one specific person, 
which is always able to penetrate the trance. (‘‘ Les Maladies de la Volonté,” p. 125.) 

* Vita e Dottrina, cap. v. 3 Vida, cap. xx. § 29. 

FF 


434 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


in the mind. Contemplation implies exercise of will and the 
power of interrupting the extreme tension of the mind. In 
ecstasy, which is contemplation carried to its highest pitch, the 
will, although in the strictest sense able to provoke the state, 
is nevertheless unable to suspend it.’’! 

In “complete mono-ideism ” then, the attention to one thing, 
and the inattention to all else, is so entire, that the subject is 
- entranced. Consciousness has been withdrawn from those ~ 
centres which receive and respond to the messages of the - 
external world: he neither sees, feels, nor hears. The go 
dormio et cor meum vigilat of the contemplative ceases to be a 
metaphor, and becomes a realistic description. It must be 
remembered that the whole trend of mystical education has 
been towards the production of this fixity of attention. Re- 
collection and Quiet lead up to it. Contemplation cannot 
take place without it. All the mystics assure us that a unifi- 
cation of consciousness, in which all outward things are forgot, 
is the necessary prelude of union with the Divine: for con- 
sciousness of the Many and consciousness of the One are 
mutually exclusive states. 

Ecstasy, for the psychologist, is just such a unification in 
its most extreme form. The absorption of the self in the one 
idea, the one desire, is so profound—and in the case of the 
great mystics so impassioned—that everything else is blotted 
out. The tide of life is withdrawn, not only from those higher 
centres which are the seats of perception and of thought, but 
also from those lower centres which govern the physical life. 
The whole vitality of the subject is so concentrated on the 
transcendental world—or, in the case of a morbid ecstatic, on the 
idea which dominates his mind—that body and brain alike are 
depleted of their energy in the interests of this supreme act. 

Since mystics have, as a rule, the extreme susceptibility 
to suggestions and impressions which is characteristic of all 
artistic and creative types, it is not surprising to find that 
their ecstasies are often evoked, abruptly, by the exhibition 
of, or concentration upon, some loved and special symbol 
of the divine. Such symbols form the rallying-points about 
which are gathered a whole group of ideas and intuitions. 
Their presence—sometimes the sudden thought of them—will 


t A. Maury, “ Le Sommeil et les Réves,” p. 235. 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 435 


be enough, in psychological language, to provoke a discharge of 
energy along some particular path: that is to say, to stir to 
life all those ideas and intuitions which belong to the self’s 
consciousness of the Absolute, to concentrate vitality on them, 
to shift the field of consciousness and initiate the self into 
that world of perception of which they are, as it were, the 
material keys. Hence the profound significance of symbols 
_ for some mystics: their paradoxical clinging to outward 
forms whilst declaring that the spiritual and intangible alone 
is real. 

For the Christian mystics, the sacraments and mysteries of 
faith have always provided such a pozmt d’appuz; and these 
symbols often play a large part in the production of their - 
ecstasies. In the case of St. Catherine of Siena, and also 
very often in that of her namesake of Genoa, the reception of 
Holy Communion was the prelude to ecstasy. Julian of Nor- 
wich: and St. Francis of Assisi? became entranced whilst 
gazing on the crucifix. We are told of Denis the Carthusian 
that towards the end of his life, hearing the Venz Creator or 
certain verses of the psalms, he was at once rapt in God and 
lifted up from the earth.3 

Of St. Catherine of Siena, her biographer says that “she 
used to communicate with such fervour that immediately after- 
wards she would pass into the state of ecstasy, in which for 
hours she would be totally unconscious. On one occasion, 
finding her in this condition, they (the Dominican friars) 
forcibly threw her out of the church at midday, and left her ~ 
in the heat of the sun watched over by some of her companions 
till she came to her senses.” Another, “catching sight of her 
in the church when she was in ecstasy, came down and pricked 
her in many places with a needle. Catherine was not aroused 
in the least from her trance, but afterwards, when she came 
back to her senses, she felt the pain in her body and perceived 
that she had thus been wounded.” 4 
It is interesting to compare with this objective description, 
the subjective account of ecstatic union which Catherine gives 


* § Revelations of Divine Love,” cap. iii. 

® Vide supra, p. 218. 

3D. A. Mougel, “‘ Denys le Chartreux,’’ p. 32. 
4 E. Gardner, ‘‘ St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 50. 


436 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


in her Divine Dialogue. Here, for once, we have the deeper 
self of the mystic giving in a dramatic form its own account 
of its inward experiences: hence we here see the inward side 
of that outward state of entrancement which was all that 
onlookers were able to perceive. As usual in the Dialogue, 
the intuitive perceptions of the deeper self are attributed by 
Catherine to the Divine Voice speaking in her soul. 

“ Oftentimes, through the perfect union which the soul has 
made with Me, she is raised from the earth almost as if the 
heavy body became light. But this does not mean that the 
heaviness of the body is taken away, but that the union of 
the soul with Me is more perfect than the union of the body 
with the soul; wherefore the strength of the spirit, united with 
Me, raises the weight of the body from the earth, leaving it as 
if immoveable and all pulled to pieces in the affection of the 
soul. Thou rememberest to have heard it said of some 
creatures, that were it not for My Goodness, in seeking 
strength for them, they would not be able to live; and I 
would tell thee that, in the fact that the souls of some do 
not leave their bodies, is to be seen a greater miracle than in 
the fact that some have arisen from the dead, so great is the 
union which they have with Me. I, therefore, sometimes for a 
space withdraw from the union, making the soul return to the 
vessel of her body ... from which she was separated by the 
affection of love. From the body she did not depart, because 
that cannot be except in death; the bodily powers alone de- 
parted, becoming united to Me through affection of love. The 
memory is full of nothing but Me, the intellect, elevated, gazes 


upon the object of My Truth; the affection, which follows the — 


intellect, loves and becomes united with that which the intellect 
sees. These powers, being united and gathered together and 
immersed and inflamed in Me, the body loses its feeling, so that 
the seeing eye sees not, and the hearing ear hears not, and the 
tongue does not speak ; except as the abundance of the heart 
will sometimes permit it for the alleviation of the heart and the 
praise and glory of My Name. The hand does not touch and 
the feet walk not, because the members are bound with the 
sentiment of Love,” ? 

A healthy ecstasy so deep as this seems to be the exclusive 


* Dialogo, cap. Ixxix. 


a 





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I 


4 
vy 
: 
> 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 437 


prerogative of the mystics: perhaps because so great a passion, 
so profound a concentration, can be produced by nothing 
smaller than their flaming love of God. But as the machinery 
of contemplation is employed more or less consciously by all 
types of creative genius: by inventors and philosophers, by ~ 
poets, prophets, and musicians, by all the followers of the 
“Triple Star,” no less than by the mystic saints: so too, 
this apotheosis of contemplation, the ecstatic state, does appear 
in a less violent form, acting healthily and normally, wherever 
we have the artistic and creative personality in a complete 
state of development. It accompanies the prophetic intuitions 
of the seer, the lucidity of the great metaphysician, the artist’s 
supreme perception of beauty or truth. As the saint is “ caught 
up to God,” so these are “caught up” to their vision: their 
partial apprehensions of the Absolute Life. Those joyous, 
expansive outgoing sensations, characteristic of the ecstatic 
consciousness, are theirs also. Their great creations are trans- 
lations to us, not of something they have thought, but of 
something they have known, in a moment of ecstatic union 
with the “great life of the All.” 

We begin, then, to think that the “pure mono-ideism,” which 
the psychologist identifies with ecstasy, though doubtless a part, 
is far from being the whole content of this state. True, the 
ecstatic is absorbed in his one idea, his one love: he is in it 
and with it: it fills his universe. But this unified state of 
consciousness does not merely pore upon something already 
possessed. When it only does this, it is diseased. Its true busi- 
ness is pure perception. It is outgoing, expansive: its goal is 
something beyond itself. The rearrangement of the psychic | 
self which occurs in ecstasy is not merely concerned with the 
normal elements of consciousness. It is a temporary unifica- 
tion of consciousness around that centre of transcendental 
perception which mystics call the “spark of the soul.” Those 
deeper layers of personality which normal life keeps below 
the threshold are active in it: and these are fused with the 
surface personality by the governing passion, the transcendent 
love which lies at the basis of all sane ecstatic states. 

The result is not merely a mind concentrated on one idea, 
nor a heart fixed on one desire, nor even a mind and a heart 
united in the interests of a beloved thought: but a whole being 


438 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


welded into one, all its faculties, neglecting their normal uni- 
verse, grouped about a new centre, serving a new life, and 
piercing like a single flame the barriers of the sensual world. 
Ecstasy is the psycho-physical state which generally accom- 
panies and expresses this brief synthetic act. 


C. Therefore,whilst on its physical side ecstasy is an entrance- — 


ment, on its mental side a complete unification of consciousness: 
on its mystical side it is an exalted act of perception. It 
represents the greatest possible extension of the spiritual 
consciousness in the direction of Pure Being: the “blind intent 
stretching” here receives its reward in a profound experience of 
Eternal Life. In this experience the departmental activities 
of thought and feeling, the consciousness of I-hood, of space 
and time—all that belongs to the World of Becoming and 
our own place therein—are suspended. The vitality which we 
are accustomed to split amongst these various things, is gathered 
up to form a state of “pure apprehension”: a vivid intuition of 
—or if you like conjunction with—the Transcendent. For the 
time of his ecstasy the mystic is, for all practical purposes, as 
truly living in the supersensual world as the normal human 
animal is living in the sensual world. He is experiencing the 
highest and most joyous of those temporary and unstable states 
in which his consciousness escapes the limitations of the senses, 
rises to freedom, and is united for an instant with the “ great 
life of the All.” 

Ecstasy, then, from the contemplatives’ point of view, is the 
development and completion of the orison of union: and he 
is not always at pains to distinguish the two degrees, a fact 
which adds greatly to the difficulties of students: In both 


states—though he may, for want of better language, describe - 


his experience in terms of sight—the Transcendent is perceived 
by contact, not by vision: as, enfolded in darkness with one 
whom we love, we obtain a knowledge far more complete 
than that conferred by the sharpest sight, the most perfect 
mental analysis. In Ecstasy, the apprehension is perhaps more 
definitely “beatific” than in the orison of union. Such memory 
of his feeling-states as the ecstatic brings back with him is more 
often concerned with an exultant certainty—a conviction that 


* In the case of Dante, for instance, we do not know whether his absorption in 
the Eternal Light did or did not entail the condition of trance. 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 439 


he has known for once the Reality which hath no image, and 
solved the paradox of life—than with meek self-loss in that 
Cloud of Unknowing where the contemplative in union is 
content to meet his Beloved. The true note of ecstasy, how- 
ever, its only valid distinction from infused contemplation, lies 
in extrancement; in “being ravished out of fleshly feeling,” as 
St. Paul caught up to the Third Heaven,* not in “the lifting 
of mind unto God.” This, of course, is an outward distinction 
only, and a rough one at that, since entrancement has many 
degrees: but it will be found the only practical basis of 
classification. | 

Probably none but those who have experienced these states 
know the actual difference between them. Even St. Teresa’s 
psychological insight fails her here, and she is obliged to fall 
back on the difference between voluntary and involuntary 
absorption in the divine: a difference, not in spiritual values, 
but merely in the psycho-physical constitutions of those who 
have perceived these values. “I wish I could explain with the 
help of God,” she says, “ wherein union differs from rapture, or 
from transport, or from flight of the spirit, as they call it, or 
from trance, which are all one. I mean that all these are 
only different names for that ove and the same thing, whtch ts 
also called ecstasy. It is more excellent than union, the fruits 
of it are much greater, and its other operations more manifold, 
for union is uniform in the beginning, the middle, and the end, 
and is so also interiorly; but as raptures have ends of a much 
higher kind, they produce effects both within and without [2z.e., 
both physical and psychical]. . . . A rapture is absolutely irre- 
sistible; whilst union, inasmuch as we are then on our own 
ground, may be hindered, though that resistance be painful 
and violent.” 2 

From the point of view of mystical psychology, our interest 
in ecstasy will centre in two points. (1) What has the mystic 
to tell us of the Object of his ecstatic perception? (2) What is 
the nature of the peculiar consciousness which he enjoys in his 
trance? That is to say, what news does he bring us as to the 
Being of God and the powers of man? 

It may be said generally that on both these points he bears 
out, amplifies, and expresses under formule of greater splendour, 


* 2 Cor. xii. 1-6. 2 Vida, cap. xxe §§ I and 3. 


440 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


with an accent of greater conviction, the general testimony of 
the contemplatives. In fact, we must never forget that an 
ecstatic is really nothing else than a contemplative of a special 
kind, with a special psycho-physical make-up. Moreover, we 
have seen that it is not always easy to determine the exact 
point at which entrancement takes place, and deep contempla- 
tion assumes the ecstatic form. The classification, like all 
classifications of mental states, is an arbitrary one. Whilst the 
extreme cases present no difficulty, there are others less com- 
plete, which form a graduated series between the deeps of the 
“ Quiet” and the heights of “ Rapture.” We shall never know, 
for instance, whether the ecstasies of Plotinus and of Pascal 
involved true bodily entrancement, or only a deep absorption of 
the “unitive” kind. So, too, the language of many Christian 
mystics when speaking of their “raptures” is so vague and 
metaphorical that it leaves us in great doubt as to whether they 
mean by Rapture the abrupt suspension of normal conscious- 
ness, or merely a sudden and agreeable elevation of soul, 

“ Ravishing,” says Rolle, “as it is showed, in two ways 
is to be understood. One manner, forsooth, in which a man is 
ravished out of fleshly feeling; so that for the time of his 
ravishing plainly he feels not in flesh, nor what is done of his 
flesh, and yet he is not dead but quick, for yet the soul to the 
body gives life. And on this manner saints sometime are 
ravished to their profit and other men’s learning; as Paul 
ravished to the third heaven. And on this manner sinners also 
in vision sometime are ravished, that they may see joys of 
saints and pains of damned for their correction! And many 
other as we read of. Another manner of ravishing there is, that 
is lifting of mind into God by contemplation. And this manner 
of ravishing is in all that are perfect lovers of God, and in none 
but in them that love God. And as well this is called a ravish- 
ing as the other; for with a violence it is done, and as it were 
against nature.” 2 

It is, however, very confusing to the anxious inquirer when 


* Compare Dante, Letter to Can Grande, sect. 28, where he adduces this 
fact of ‘‘ the ravishing of sinners for their correction,” in support of his claim that the 
‘Divine Comedy ” is the fruit of experience, and that he had indeed ‘navigated the 
great Sea of Being’’ of which he writes. 

2 Richard Kolle, ‘‘ The Fire of Love,” bk. ii. cap. vii. 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE - 447 


—as too often—“lifting of mind by contemplation” is “as well 
called a ravishing as the other,” and ecstasy is used as a 
‘synonym for gladness of heart. Here, so far as is possible, 
these words will be confined to their strict meaning and not 
‘applied generally to the description of all the outgoing and 
expansive states of the transcendental consciousness. 

What does the mystic claim that he attains in this abnormal 
‘condition—this irresistible trance? The price that he pays is a 
heavy one, involving much psycho-physical wear and tear. 
_ He declares that his rapture or ecstasy includes a moment— 
often a very short, and always an indescribable moment—in 
which he enjoys a supreme knowledge of or participation in 
Divine Reality. He tells us under various metaphors that he 
then attains Pure Being, his Source, his Origin, his Beloved: “ is 
engulphed in the very thing for which he longs, which is God.” ! 
“ Oh, wonder of wonders,” cries Eckhart, “when I think of the 
union the soul has with God! He makes the enraptured soul 
to flee out of herself, for she is no more satisfied with anything 
that can be named. The spring of Divine Love flows out of the 
‘soul and draws her out of herself into the unnamed Being, into 
her first source, which is God alone.” 2 

This momentary attainment of the Source, the Origin, is 

the theme of all descriptions of mystic ecstasy. In Rulman 
Merswin’s “ Book of the Nine Rocks,” that brief and overwhelm- 
ing rapture is the end of the pilgrim’s long trials and ascents. 
“The vision of the Infinite lasted only for a moment: when he 
came to himself he felt inundated with life and joy. He asked, 
“Where have I been?” and he was answered, “In the upper 
school of the Holy Spirit. There you were surrounded by the 
dazzling pages of the Book of Divine Wisdom.3 Your soul 
plunged therein with delight, and the Divine Master of the 
school has filled her with an exuberant love by which even 
your physical nature has been transfigured.” 4 

Another Friend of God, Ellina von Crevelsheim, who was of 

so abnormal a psychic constitution that her absorption in the 





* Dante, oc. czt. 

? Eckhart, ‘* On the Steps of the Soul ”’ (Pfeiffer, p. 153). 

3 Compare Par. xxxiii. 85 (vzde supra, p. 160). 

4 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,” p. 27. Note that this was a ‘good ecstasy,” 
involving healthful effects for life. 


442 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Divine Love caused her to remain dumb for seven years, was 
“touched by the Hand of God” at the end of that period, and 
fell into a five-days’ ecstasy, in which “ pure truth” was revealed 
to her, and she was lifted up to an immediate experience of the 
Absolute. There she “saw the interior of the Father’s heart,” 
and was “bound with chains of love, enveloped in light, and 
filled with peace and joy.”! 

In this transcendent act of union the mystic sometimes says 
that he is “conscious of nothing.” But it is clear that this 
expression is figurative, for otherwise he would not have known 
that there had been an act of union: were his individuality 
abolished, it could not have been aware of its attainment of 
God. What he appears to mean is that consciousness so 
changes its form as to be no longer recognizable: or describable 
in human speech, In the paradoxical language of Richard of 
St. Victor, “In a wondrous fashion remembering we do not 
remember, seeing we do not see, understanding we not under- 
stand, penetrating we do not penetrate.”2 In this wholly in- 
describable but most actual state, the whole self, exalted and at 
white heat, is unified and poured out in one vivid act of impas- 
sioned perception, which leaves no room for reflection or self- 
observation. That aloof “somewhat” in us which watches all 
our actions, splits our consciousness, has been submerged. The 
mystic is attending exclusively to Eternity, not to his own 
perception of Eternity. That he can only consider when the 
ecstasy itself is at an end. 


‘* All things I then forgot, 
My cheek on Him Who for my coming came, 
All ceased, and I was not, 
Leaving my cares and shame 

Among the lilies, and forgetting them.’’3 


This is that state of perfect unity of consciousness, of utter 
concentration on an experience of love, which excludes all con- 
ceptual and analytic acts. Hence, when the mystic says that 
his faculties were suspended, that he “knew all and knew 


* Jundt, ‘‘ Les Amis de Dieu,” p. 39. Given also by Rufus Jones, ‘‘ Studies in 
Mystical Religion,”’ p. 271. 

2 “Benjamin Major.” 

3 St. John of the Cross, ‘‘ En una Noche Escura.” 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 443 


nought,” he really means that he was so concentrated on the 
Absolute that he ceased to consider his separate existence: so 
merged in it that he could not perceive it as an object of 
thought, as the bird cannot see the air which supports it, nor 
the fish the ocean in which it swims. He really “knows all * 
but “thinks” nought: “ perceives all,’ but “ conceives nought.” 

The ecstatic consciousness is not self-conscious: it is intui- 
tive, not discursive. Under the sway of a great passion, 
possessed by a great Idea, it has become “a single state of 
enormous intensity.”! In this state, it transcends all our ordi- 
“nary machinery of knowledge, and plunges deep into the Heart 
of Reality. A fusion which is the anticipation of the unitive 
life takes place: and the ecstatic returns from this brief fore- 
taste of freedom saying, in the words of a living mystical philo- 
sopher, “I know, as having known, the meaning of Existence ; 
the sane centre of the universe—at once the wonder and the 
assurance of the soul.”2 ‘‘ This utter transformation of the soul 
in God,” says St. Teresa, describing the same experience in the 
official language of theology, “continues only for an instant: 
yet while it continues no faculty of the soul is aware of it, or 
knows what is passing there. Nor can it be understood while 
we are living on the earth; at least God will not have us under- 
stand it, because we must be incapable of understanding it. J 
know tt by experience.” 3 

The utterances of those who know by experience are here of 
more worth than all the statements of psychology, which are 
concerned of necessity with the “outward signs” of this 
“inward and spiritual grace.” To these we must go if we would 
obtain some hint of that which ecstasy may mean to the 
ecstatic. 

“ When the soul, forgetting itself, dwells in that radiant dark- 
ness,” says Suso, “it loses all its faculties and all its qualities, 
as St. Bernard has said. And this, more or less completely, 
according to whether the soul—whether in the body or out of 
the body—is more or less united to God. This forgetfulness of 
self is, in a measure, a transformation in God; who then 


* Ribot, ‘* Psychologie de l’Attention,”’ cap. iii. 
2B. P. Blood. See William James, “A Pluralistic Mystic,” in the Azbdert 
Journal, July, 1910. 
3 Vida, cap. xx. § 24. 


444 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


becomes, in a certain manner, all things for the soul, as 
Scripture saith. In this rapture the soul disappears, but not 
yet entirely. It acquires, it is true, certain qualities of divinity, 
but does not naturally become divine. ... To speak in the. 
common language, the soul is rapt, by the divine power of 
resplendent Being, above its natural faculties, into the nakedness _ 
of the Nothing.” ! 

Here, of course, Suso is trying to describe his rapturous 
attainment of God in the negative terms of Dionysian theology. 
It is likely enough that much of the language of that theology 
originated, not in the abstract philosophizings, but in the actual 
ecstatic experience, of the Neoplatonists, who—Christian and 
Pagan alike—believed in, and sometimes deliberately induced, 
this condition as the supreme method of attaining the One. The 
whole Christian doctrine of ecstasy, on its metaphysical side, 
really descends from that great practical transcendentalist Plo- 
tinus: who is known to have been an ecstatic, and has left in his 
Sixth Ennead a description of the mystical trance obviously based 
upon his own experiences, ‘“ Then,” he says, “the soul neither 
sees, nor distinguishes by seeing, nor imagines that there are 
two things ; but becomes as it were another thing, and not itself. 
Nor does that which pertains to itself contribute anything there. 
But becoming wholly absorbed in Deity, she is Ome, conjoining 
as it were centre with centre. For here concurring they are 
One; but when they are separate, they are two. . . . Therefore 
in this conjunction with Deity there were not two things, but the 
perceiver was one with the thing perceived, as not being Vzszon 
but Uxzon; whoever becomes one by mingling with Deity, and 
afterwards recollects this union, will have within himself an 
image of it... . For then there was not anything excited with 
him who had ascended thither; neither anger, nor desire of 
anything else, nor reason, nor a certain intellectual perception, 
nor, in short, was he himself moved, if it be needful also ta — 
assert this; but, being as it were in an ecstasy, or energising 
enthustastically, he became established in quiet and solitary — 
union.” 2 Ecstasy, says Plotinus in another part of the same 
treatise, is “an expansion or accession, a desire of contact, rest, — 
and a striving after conjunction.” All the phases of the con- 
templative experience seem to be summed up in this phrase. 


* Leben, cap. lv. ? Ennead vi. 9. 








ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 445 


It has been said by some critics that the ecstasy of Plotinus 
was wholly different in kind from the ecstasy of the Christian 
saints: that it was a philosophic rhapsody, something like 
Plato’s “saving madness,” which is also regarded on wholly 
insufficient evidence as being an affair of the head and entirely 
unconnected with the heart. At first sight the arid meta- 
physical language in which Plotinus tries to tell his love, offers 
some ground for this view. But whatever philosophic towers of 
Babel he may build on it, the ecstasy itself is a practical 
matter; and has its root, not in reason, but in a deep-seated 
passion for the Absolute which is far nearer to the mystic’s 
love of God than to any intellectual curiosity, however 
sublime. The few passages in which it is mentioned tell us 
what his mystical genius drove him to do: and not what his 
philosophical mind encouraged him to think or say. At once 
when we come to these passages we notice a rise of tempera- 
ture, an alteration of values. Plotinus the ecstatic is sure, 
whatever Plotinus the metaphysician may think, that the union 
with God is a union of hearts: that “ by love He may be gotten 
and holden, but by thought never.” He, no less than the 
mediaeval contemplatives, is convinced—to quote his own words 
—that the Vision is only for the desirous ; for him who has that 
“loving passion” which “causes the lover to rest in the object 
of his love.” The simile of marriage, of conjunction as the 
soul’s highest bliss, which we are sometimes told that we owe in 
part to the unfortunate popularity of the Song of Solomon, in 
part to the sexual aberrations of celibate saints, is found in the 
work of this hard-headed Pagan philosopher: who was as cele- 
brated for his practical kindness and robust common sense 
as for his transcendent intuitions of the One. 

The greatest of the Pagan ecstatics, then, when speaking 
from experience, anticipates the Christian contemplatives. His 
words, too, when compared with theirs, show how delicate are 
the shades which distinguish ecstasy such as this from the 
highest forms of orison; how clumsy are those psychologists 
who find in “ passivity and annihilation of the will” its governing 
state. “Energizing enthusiastically »—not in itself, or by means 
of its poor scattered faculties, but in the Divine Life, to which it 
is conjoined for an instant of time “centre to centre,” “per- 


* Op. cit., loc. cit. 
‘ 


446 AN INTRODUCTION ro MYSTICISM 


ceiver and perceived made one”—this is as near as the subtle 
intellect of Alexandria can come to the reality of that experi- 
ence in which the impassioned mono-ideism of great spiritual 
genius conquers the rebellious senses and becomes, if only for | 
a moment, operative on the highest levels accessible to the: 
human soul. Self-mergence, then—that state of transcendence 
in which, the barriers of selfhood abolished, we “receive the | 
communication of Life and of Beatitude, in which all things are 
consummated and all things are renewed ”!—is the secret of 
ecstasy, as it was the secret of contemplation. On their spiritual 
side the two states cannot, save for convenience of description, be 
divided. Where contemplation becomes expansive, out-going, 
self-giving, and receives a definite fruition of the Absolute in 
return, its content is already ecstatic. Whether its outward form 
shall be so depends on the body of the mystic, not on his soul, 


** Se I’ acto della mente 
é tutto consopito, 
en Dio stando rapito, 
ch’ en sé non se retrova. 


En mezo desto mare 
essendo si abyssato, 
gia non ce trova lato 
onde ne possa uscire. 


De sé non puo pensare 
né dir como é formato 
pero che, trasformato, 
altro si ha vestire. 


Tutto lo suo sentire 
en ben si va notando, 
belleza contemplando 
la qual non ha colore.’’? 


Thus sang Jacopone da Todi of the ecstatic soul: and here the 


* Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ De Contemplatione ” (Hello, p. 144). . 

2 «The activity of the mind is lulled to rest: wrapped in God, it can no longer 
find itself. . . . Being so deeply engulphed in that ocean now it can find no place 
to issue therefrom. Of itself it cannot think, nor can it say what it is like: because, 
transformed, it hath another vesture. All its perceptions have gone forth to gaze 
upon the Good, and contemplate that Beauty which has no likeness” (Lauda xci.). 





ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 447 


descriptive powers of one who was both a poet and a mystic 
bring life and light to the dry theories of psychology. 

He continues—and here, in perhaps the finest of all poetic 
descriptions of ecstasy, he seems to echo at one point Plotinus, 
at another Richard of St. Victor: to at once veil and reveal, by 
means of his perfect command of the resources of rhythm, the 
utmost secrets of the mystic life :— 


** Aperte son le porte 
facta ha conjunctione 
et € in possessione 
de tutto quel de Dio. 


Sente que non sentio, 
que non cognove vede, 
possede que non crede, 
gusta senza sapore. 


Perd ch’a sé perduto 
tutto senza misura, 
possede quel altura 
de summa smesuranza. 


Perche non ha tenuto 
en sé altra mistura, 
quel ben senza figura 
receve en abondanza.’’* 


This ineffable “ awareness,” ez dio stando rapito, this union 
with the Imageless Good, is not the only—though it is the 
purest—form taken by ecstatic apprehension. Many of the 
visions and voices described in a previous chapter were experi- 
enced in the entranced or ecstatic state, generally when the 
first violence of the rapture was passed. St. Francis and St. 
Catherine of Siena both received the stigmata in ecstasy : almost 
all the entrancements of Suso, and many of those of St. Teresa 
and Angela of Foligno, entailed symbolic vision, rather than 
pure perception of the Absolute. More and more, then, we are 
forced to the opinion that ecstasy, in so far as it is not a 


* «©The doors are flung wide : conjoined to God, it possesses all that is in Him. 
It feels that which it felt not: sees that which it knew not, possesses that which it 
believed not, tastes, though it savours not. Because it is wholly lost to itself, it 
possesses that height of Unmeasured Perfection. Because it has not retained in 
itself the mixture of any other thing, it has received in abundance that Imageless 
Good” (of. cét.). 


448 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


synonym for joyous and expansive contemplation, is really the 
name of the outward condition rather than of any one kind 
of inward experience. 


RAPTURE 


In all the cases which we have been considering—and they 
are characteristic of a large group—the onset of ecstasy has 
been seen as a gradual, though always involuntary, process. 
Generally it has been the culminating point of a period of 
contemplation. The self, absorbed in the orison of quiet or of 
union, or some analogous concentration on its transcendental 
interests, has passed over the limit of these states, and slid into 
a still ecstatic trance, with its outward characteristics of rigid 
limbs, cold, and depressed respiration. 

The ecstasy however, instead of developing naturally from a 
state of intense absorption in the Divine Vision, may seize him 
abruptly and irresistibly when he in his normal state of con- 
sciousness. This is strictly that which ascetic writers mean by 
Rapture. We have seen that the essence of the mystic life con- 
sists in the remaking of. personality: its entrance into a 
conscious relation with the Absolute. This process is accom- 
panied in the mystic by the development of an art expressive of 
his peculiar genius: the art of contemplation. His practice of 
this art, like the practice of poetry, music, or any other form 
of creation, may follow normal lines, at first amenable to the 
control of his will, and always dependent on his own deliberate 
attention to the supreme Object of his quest; that is to say, on 
his orison. His mystic states, however they may end, will owe 
their beginning to a voluntary act upon his part: a turning from 
the visible to the invisible world. Sometimes, however, his 
genius for the transcendent becomes too strong for the other 
elements of character, and manifests itself in psychic disturb- 
ances—abrupt and ungovernable invasions from the subliminal 
region—which make its exercise parallel to the “fine frenzy” 
of the prophet, the composer, or the poet. Such is Rapture: a 
violent and uncontrollable expression of genius for the Absolute, 
which temporarily disorganizes and may permanently injure the 
nervous system of the self. Often, but not necessarily, Rapture— 
like its poetic equivalent—yields results of great splendour and 
value for life. But it is an accident, not an implicit of mystical 


ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 449 


experience: an indication of disharmony between the subject’s 
psycho-physical make-up and his transcendental powers. 

Rapture, then, may accompany the whole development of 
selves of an appropriate type. We have seen that it is a 
common incident in mystical conversion. The violent uprush 
of subliminal intuitions by which such conversion is marked 
disorganizes the normal consciousness, overpowers the will 
and the senses, and entails a more or less complete entrance- 
ment. This was certainly the case with Suso and Rulman 
Merswin, and probably with Pascal: whose “Certitude, Peace, 
Joy” sums up the exalted intuition of Perfection and Reality— 
the conviction of a final and unforgettable knowledge—which 
is characteristic of all ecstatic perception. | 

In her Spiritual Relations, St. Teresa speaks in some detail 
of the different phases or forms of expression of these violent 
ecstatic states : trance, which in her system means that which we 
have called ecstasy, and transport, or “flight of the spirit,” which 
is the equivalent of rapture. ‘“ The difference between trance 
and transport,” she says, “is this. In a trance the soul gradually 
dies to outward things, losing the senses and living unto God. 
But a transport comes on by one sole act of His Majesty, 
wrought in the innermost part of the soul with such swiftness 
that it is as if the higher part thereof were carried away, and the 
soul were leaving the body.” ! 

Rapture, says St. Teresa in another place, “comes in - 
general as a shock, quick and sharp, before you can collect your 
thoughts, or help yourself in any way ; and you see and feel it 
as a cloud, or a strong eagle rising upwards and carrying you 
away on its wings. I repeat it: you feel and see yourself 
carried away, you know not whither.”2 This carrying-away 
sensation may even assume the concrete form which is known 
as levitation: when the upward and outward sensations so 
dominate the conscious field that the subject is convinced that 
she is raised bodily from the ground. “It seemed to me, when 
I tried to make some resistance, as if a great force beneath my 
feet lifted meup. I know of nothing with which to compare it ; 
but it was much more violent than the other spiritual visitations, 
and I was therefore as one ground to pieces. . . . And further, 
I confess that it threw me into a great fear, very great indeed at 

* Relaccion viii. $ and 10. * Vida, cap. xx. § 3. 

GG 


450 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


first; for when I saw my body thus lifted up from the earth, — 
how could I help it? Though the spirit draws it upwards after 
itself, and that with great sweetness if unresisted, the senses are 
not lost; a¢ least I was so much myself as to be able to see that 
I was being lifted up.” * 

So Rulman Merswin in the rapture which accompanied his 
conversion, was carried round the garden with his feet off the 
ground :2 and St. Catherine of Siena, in a passage which I have 
already quoted, speaks of the strength of the spirit, which raises 
the body from the earth.3 

The subjective nature of this feeling of levitation is practi- 
cally acknowledged by St. Teresa when she says, “When the 
rapture was over, my body seemed frequently to be buoyant, as 
if all weight had departed from it; so much so, that now and 
then I scarcely knew that my feet touched the ground. But 
during the rapture the body is very often as it were dead, 
perfectly powerless. It continues in the position it was in when 
the rapture came upon it—if sitting, sitting.” | Obviously here 
the outward conditions of physical immobility coexisted with 
the subjective sensation of being “lifted up.”4 

The self’s consciousness when in the condition of rapture 
may vary from the complete possession of her faculties claimed 
by St. Teresa to a complete entrancement. However abrupt 
the on-coming of the transport, it does not follow that the 
mystic instantly loses his surface-consciousness. “There re- 
mains the power of seeing and hearing; but it is as if the 
things heard and seen were at a great distance far away.” 5 
They have retreated, that is to say, to the fringe of the 
conscious field, but may: still remain just within it. Though 
the senses may not be entirely entranced, however, it seems 
that the power of movement is always lost. As in ecstasy, 


breathing and circulation are much diminished. 
“When the Divine Bridegroom desires to enrapture the. 


soul, He orders all the doors of its habitations, even those 
of the castle and its outworks, to be closed. In fact, hardly 
has one entered the rapture, when one ceases to breathe; 


t St. Teresa, of. ctt., loc. ctt., §§ 7 and 9. 
2 Supra, p. 224. 3 Dialogo, cap. Ixxix. 
4 Vida, cap. xx. § 23. At the same time, in the present state of our knowledge, 
and in view of the numerous attested cases, it is impossible to dogmatise on this 
subject. 5 Lbid. 


-ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 451 


and if sometimes one retains for a few moments the use of 
one’s other senses, one cannot, nevertheless, speak a single 
word. At other times, all the senses are instantly suspended ; 
the hands and the whole body become so intensely cold that 
the soul seems to be separated therefrom. Sometimes it is 
difficult to know whether one still breathes. Rapture lasts 
but a short time, at least at this high degree: the extreme 
suspension is relaxed, and the body seems to regain life, that 
it may die anew in the same manner, and make the soul 
more living than before.” 

This spiritual storm, then, in St. Teresa’s opinion, enhances 
the vitality of those who experience it: makes them “more 
living than before.” It initiates them into “ heavenly secrets,” 
and if it does not do this it is no “true rapture,’ but a 
“physical weakness such as women are prone to owing to 
their delicacy of constitution.” Its sharpness and violence, 
however, leaves considerable mental disorder behind it: “ for 
the rest of the day, and sometimes for several days, the 
will seems overcome, the understanding is beside itself: the 
soul seems incapable of applying itself to anything else but 
the Love of God; and she applies herself to this with the 
more ardour that she feels nothing but disgust for created 
things.” 2 

But when equilibrium is re-established, the true effects of 
this violent and beatific intuition of the Absolute begin to 
invade the normal life. The self which has thus been caught 
up to the highest levels of Reality, is stung to new activity by 
the strength of its impressions. It now desires an eternal 
union with that which it has beheld; with which for a brief 
moment it has been merged. The peculiar talent of the mystic ; 
that wild genius, that deep-seated power of perceiving Reality 
which his contemplations have ordered and developed, and his 
ecstasies express, here reacts upon his life-process, his slow 
journey from the Many to the One. His nostalgia has been 
increased by a glimpse of the homeland. His intuitive appre- 
hension of the Absolute, which assumes m ecstasy its most 
positive form, spurs him on towards that total and permanent 
union with the Divine which is his goal. “Such great graces,” 


* St. Teresa, ‘‘ El Castillo Interior,’? Moradas Sextas, cap. iv. 
2 OD. cit., loc. cit. 


452 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


says St. Teresa, “leave the sou! avid of total possession of that 
Divine Bridegroom who has conferred them.” 2 

Hence the ecstatic states do not merely lift the self to an 
abnormal degree of knowledge: they enrich her life, contribute 
to the remaking of her consciousness, develop and uphold the 
“strong and stormy love which drives her home.” They give 
her the clearest vision she can have of that transcendent 
standard to which she must conform: entail her sharpest 
consciousness of the inflow of that Life on which her little 
striving life depends. Little wonder, then, that—though the 
violence of their onset may often try his body to the full—the 
mystic comes forth from a “ good ecstasy” as Pascal from the 
experience of the Fire, humbled yet exultant, marvellously 
strengthened ; and ready, not for any passive enjoyments, but 
rather for the struggles and hardships of the Way, the 
deliberate pain and sacrifice of love. 

In the third Degree of Ardent Love, says Richard of St. 
Victor, love paralyses action. Union (copula) is the symbol of 
this state: ecstasy is its expression. The desirous soul, he 
says finely, no longer thirsts for God but zztfo God. The pull 
of its desire draws it into the Infinite Sea. The mind is borne 
away into the abyss of Divine Light, and, wholly forgetful of 
exterior things, knows not even itself, but passes utterly into 
its God. In this state, all earthly desire is absorbed in the 
heavenly glory. “Whilst the mind is separated from itself, and 
whilst it is borne away into the secret place of the divine 
mystery and is surrounded on all sides by the fire of divine 
love, it is inwardly penetrated and inflamed by this fire, and 
utterly puts off itself and puts on a divine love: and being 
conformed to that Beauty which it has beheld, it passes utterly 
into that other glory.” 2 

Thus does the state of ecstasy contribute to the business of 
deification ; of the remaking of the soul’s substance in con- 
formity with the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which is God, 
“ Being conformed to that beauty which it has beheld, it passes 
utterly into that other glory”; into the flaming heart of Reality, 
the deep but dazzling darkness of its home. 


* St. Teresa, of. cit., cap. vi. = ~ 
2 «De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Charitatis” (paraphrase). 


CHAPTER IX 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 


We return to a study of the mystical life-process—The swing-back from illumina- 
tion—The Dark Night—(r1) Its psychological character—A period of psychic fatigue— 
Reaction from the strain of mystical lucidity—The sorting-house of the spiritual life— 
Its on-set is gradual—Madame Guyon—A state of mental chaos—The transition to 
new levels of consciousness—Mystical adolescence—Psycho-spiritual parallelism— 
Augustine Baker—(2) Its mystical character—Takes many forms—Emotional, 
Intellectual, Volitional—A completion of Purgation—The final purification of self- 
hood—The passage from Luna to Sol—Always painful—Its principal forms—(a) The 
loss of the presence of God—St. John of the Cross—Madame Guyon—Extinction of 
the transcendental consciousness—(6) The acute sense of imperfection—St. John of 
the Cross—(c) Loss of mystic feeling—Spiritual ennui—Ruysbroeck—(d) Intellec- 
tual impotence—Loss of will-power—St. Teresa—(e) The pain of God, or dark 
ecstasy—St. Teresa—All these are aspects of one state—The purification of the 
whole Personality—An episode in character building—Essential to the attain- 
ment of Reality—William Law—Surrender—St. Catherine of Siena—Adaptation to 
environment—St. John of the Cross—A process beyond the selfs control—Self- 
naughting—Spiritual Poverty—Tauler—The Dark an incident of the movement to 
union—Its gradual disappearance—Madame Guyon—An ‘‘ example from life”— 
Suso—Reasons for this choice—His entrance on the night—The Vision of the Upper 
School—The Vision of Knighthood—His education in manliness—The ideal o. 
spiritual chivalry—The final trial—Its human characteristics—Suso and the Baby— 
The last crisis—The act of surrender—The passing of the Dark Night 


N x i have wandered during the last few chapters from 
our study of the mystical life-process in man, the 
organic growth of his transcendental consciousness, 
in order to examine the by-products of that process, its cha- 
racteristic forms of self-expression: the development of its 
normal art of contemplation or introversion, and the visions and 
voices, ecstasies and raptures which are frequent—though not 
essential—accompaniments of its activity, of the ever-increasing 
predominance of its genius for the Real. 
But the mystic, like other persons of genius, is man first and 


artist afterwards. We shall make a grave though common 
453 


4 


454 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


mistake if we forget this and allow ourselves to be deflected 
from our study of his growth in personality by the wonder and 
interest of his art. Being, not Doing, is the first aim of the 
mystic ; and hence should be the first interest of the student of 
mysticism. We have considered for convenience’ sake all the 
chief forms of mystical activity at the half-way house of the 
transcendental life: but these activities are not, of course, 
peculiar to any one stage of that life. Ecstasy, for instance, 
is as common a feature of mystical conversion as of the last 
crisis, or “mystic marriage” of the soul :! whilst visions and 
voices—in selves of a visionary or auditory type—accompany 
and illustrate every phase of the inward development. They 
lighten and explain the trials of Purgation as often as they 
express the joys of Illumination, and frequently mark the crisis 
of transition from one mystic state to the next. | 

One exception, however, must be made to this rule. The 
most intense period of that great swing-back into darkness 
which usually divides the “first mystic life,” or Illuminative 
Way, from the “second mystic life,” or Unitive Way, is 
generally a period of utter blankness and stagnation, so far 
as mystical activity is concerned. The “Dark Night of the 
Soul,” once fully established, is seldom lit by visions or made 
homely by voices. It is of the essence of its miseries that the 
once-possessed power of orison or contemplation is now wholly 
lost. The self is tossed back from its hard won point of 
vantage. Impotence, blankness, solitude, are the epithets by 
which those immersed in this dark fire of purification describe 
their pains. It is this extraordinary episode in the life-history 
of the mystic type to which we have now come. 

We have already noticed? the chief psychological cha- 
racteristics of all normal mystical development. We have seen 
that the essence of this development consists in the effort to 
establish a new equilibrium, to get, as it were, a firm foothold 
upon transcendent levels of reality; and that in its path 
towards this consummation the self experiences a series of 
oscillations between “states of pleasure” and “states of pain.” 
Put in another way it is an orderly movement of the whole 
consciousness towards higher centres, in which each intense and 


t Vide supra, pp. 225-229, the cases of Suso and Pascal. 
* Pt. II. Cap. I. 





THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 455 


progressive affirmation fatigues the immature transcendental 
powers, and is paid for by a negation ; either a swing-back 
of the whole consciousness, a stagnation of intellect, a reaction 
of the emotions, or an inhibition of the will. 

Thus the exalted consciousness of Divine Perfection which 
the self acquired in its “mystical awakening” was balanced by 
a depressed and bitter consciousness of its own inherent imper- 
fection, and the clash of these two perceptions spurred it to that 
laborious effort of accommodation which constitutes the “ Purga- 
tive Way.” The renewed and ecstatic awareness of the 
Absolute which resulted, and which was the governing cha- 
racteristic of Illumination, brings with it of necessity its own 
proper negation: the awareness, that is to say, of the self’s 
continued separation from and incompatibility with that 
Absolute which it has perceived. During the time in which the 
illuminated consciousness is fu'ly established, the self, as a rule, 
is perfectly content : believing that in this sublime vision of 
Eternity, this intense and loving consciousness of God, it has 
reached the goal of its quest. Sooner or later, however, psychic 
fatigue sets in; the state of illumination begins to break up, 
the complementary negative consciousness appears, and shows 
itself as an overwhelming sense of darkness and deprivation. 
This sense is so deep and strong that it breaks all communica- | 
tion set up between the self and the Transcendent ; swamps its 
intuitions of Reality ; and plunges that self into the state of 
negation and unutterable misery which is called the Dark ° 
Night. 

Now. we may look at the Dark Night, as at most other 
incidents of the Mystic Way, from two points of view: (1) We 
may see it, with the psychologist, as a moment in the history of 
mental development, governed by the more or less mechanical 
laws which so conveniently explain to him the psychic life . 
of man: or (2) with the mystic himself, we may see it in its 
spiritual aspect as contributing to the remaking of character, 
the growth of the “ New Man” ; his “transmutation in-God:”—--~ 

(1) Psychologically tombideréd, ‘the Dark Night is an ex- 
ample of the operation of the law of reaction from stress. 
It is a period of fatigue and lassitude following a period of 
sustained mystical activity. “It is one of the best established 
laws of the nervous system,” says Starbuck, “that it has 


456 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


periods of exhaustion if exercised continuously in one direc- 
tion, and can only recuperate by having a period of rest.” ? 
However spiritual he may be, the mystic—so long as he is 
-in the body—cannot help using the machinery of his nervous 
‘and cerebral system in the course of his adventures. His 
development, on its psychic side, consists in the taking over of 
this nervous machinery, the capture of its centres of conscious- 
ness, in the interests of his growing transcendental life. In so 
far, then, as this is so, that transcendental life will be partly 
conditioned by psychic necessities, will be amenable to the 
laws of reaction and of fatigue. Each great step forward 
will entail a period of lassitude and exhaustion in that men- 
tal machinery which he has pressed into service and probably 
overworked. When the higher centres have become exhausted 
under the great strain of a developed illuminated life, with 
its accompanying periods of intense lucidity, of deep con- 
templation, perhaps of visionary and auditory phenomena, the 
swing-back into the negative state occurs almost of necessity. 

This is the psychological explanation of those strange 
and painful episodes in the lives of great saints, and also of 
lesser initiates of the spiritual sphere: when, perhaps after a 
long life passed in close contact with the transcendental 
order, of full and growing consciousness of the “presence of 
God,” the whole inner experience is suddenly swept away, 
and only a blind reliance on past convictions saves them — 
from unbelief? The great contemplatives, those destined to 
attain the full stature of the mystic, emerge from this period 
of destitution, however long and drastic it may be, as from a 
new purification. It is for them the gateway to a higher 
state. But persons of lesser genius cannot pass this way. If 
they enter the Night at all, it is to succumb to its dangers 
and pains. This “great negation” is the sorting-house of 
the spiritual life. Here we part from the “nature mystics,” 
the mystic poets, and all who shared in and were contented 
with the illuminated vision of reality. Those who go on are 
the great and strong spirits, who do not seek to &£xow, but 
are driven to de. 

t ¢ Psychology of Religion,” p. 24. 


* An example of this occurred in the later life of Ste. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal. 
See ‘‘ The Nuns of Port Royal,” by M. E. Lowndes (1909), p. 284. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 457 


We are to expect, then, as a part of the conditions under 
which human consciousness appears to work, that for every 
affirmation of the mystic life there will be a negation waiting 
for the unstable self. This rule is of universal application. 
The mystic’s progress in orison, for instance, is marked by 
just such an alternation of light and shade: of “dark con- 
templation”’ and sharp intuitions of Reality. So too in selves 
of extreme nervous instability, each separate joyous ecstasy 
entails a painful or negative ecstasy. The states of darkness 
and illumination coexist over a long period, alternating 
sharply and rapidly. Many seers and artists pay in this 
way, by agonizing periods of impotence and depression, for 
each violent outburst of creative energy. 

The periods of rapid oscillation between a joyous and a 
painful consciousness occur most often at the beginning of a 
new period of the mystic way: between Purgation and _ IIlu- 
mination, and again between Illumination and the Dark Night: 
for these mental states are, as a rule, gradually not abruptly 
established. Mystics call such oscillations the “Game of Love” 
in which God plays, as it were, “hide and seek” with the 
questing soul. I have already quoted a characteristic instance 
from the life of Rulman Merswin,t who passed the whole 
intervening period between his conversion and entrance on 
the Dark Night or “school of suffering love” in such a 
“ state of disequilibrium. Thus too Madame Guyon, who has 
described at great length and with much elaboration of detail all 
her symptoms and sufferings during the oncoming and duration 
of the Night—or, as she calls its intensest period, the Mystic 
Death—traces its beginning in short recurrent states of pri- 
vation, or dullness of feeling, such as ascetic writers call 
“aridity”: in which the self loses all interest in and affec- 
tion for those divine realities which had previously filled its 
life. This privation followed upon, or was the reaction from, 
an “illuminated” period of extreme joy and security, in~ 
which, as she says, “the presence of God never left her for an 
instant” ; so that it seemed to her that she already enjoyed the 
Beatific Vision. “ But how dear I paid for this time of happiness ! 
For this possession, which seemed to me entire and perfect; and 
the more perfect the more it was secret, and foreign to the 


* Vide supra, p. 274. 


458 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


senses, steadfast and exempt from change; was but the pre- 
paration for a total deprivation, lasting many years, without 
any support or hope of its return.”! Between this state of 
happiness and the “total deprivation” or true “dark night” 
comes the intermediate condition of alternating light and 
darkness. As Madame Guyon never attempted to control 
any of her states, but made a point of conforming to her 
own description of the “resigned soul” as “God’s weather- 
cock,” we have in her an unequalled opportunity of studying 
the natural sequence of development. 

“T endured,” she says, “long periods of privation, 
towards the end almost continual: but still I had from time 
to time inflowings of Thy Divinity so deep and _ intimate, 
so vivid and so penetrating, that it was easy for me to 
judge that Thou wast but hidden from me and not lost. 
For although ‘during the times of privation it seemed to me 
that I had utterly lost Thee, a certain deep support remained, 
though the soul knew it not: and she only became aware 
of that support by her subsequent total deprivation thereof. 
Every time that Thou didst return with more. goodness and 
strength, Thou didst return also with greater splendour; so 
that in a few hours Thou didst rebuild all the ruins of 
my unfaithfulness and didst make good to me with profusion 
all my loss. But it was not thus in those times of which 
I am going to speak.” 2 

Here we have, from the psychological point of view, a 
singularly perfect example of the violent oscillations of con- 
sciousness on the threshold of a new state. The old equilibrium, 
the old grouping round a centre characterized by pleasure- 
affirmation has been lost; the new grouping round a centre 
characterized by pain-negation is not yet established. Madame 
Guyon is standing, or rather swinging, between two worlds, the 
helpless prey of her own shifting and uncontrollable psychic 
and spiritual states. But slowly the pendulum approaches its 
limit: the states of privation, as she says, “become almost 
continual,” the reactions to illumination become less and less. 
At last they cease entirely, the new state is established, and the 
Dark Night has really set in. 

The theory here advanced that the “ Dark Night ” is, on its 


* Vie, pt. i. cap. xx. * Op. cit., cap. xxi. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE- SOUL 459 


psychic side, partly a condition of fatigue, partly a state of 
transition, is borne out by the mental and moral disorder which 
seems, in many subjects, to be its dominant character. When 
they are in it everything seems to “go wrong” with them. 
They are tormented by evil thoughts and abrupt temptations, 
lose grasp not only of their spiritual but also of their worldly 
affairs. Their health often suffers, they become “odd” and 
their friends forsake them ; their intellectual life is ata low ebb. 
In their own words “trials of every kind,” “exterior and interior 
crosses,” abound, 

Now “trials,” taken ex 4/oc, mean a disharmony between the 
self and the world with which it has to deal. Nothing is a trial 
when we are able to cope with it efficiently. Things try us 
when we are not adequate to them: when they are abnormally 
hard or we abnormally weak. This aspect of the matter 
becomes prominent when we look further into the history of 
Madame Guyon’s experiences. Thanks to the unctuous and 
detailed manner in which she has analyzed her spiritual griefs, 
this part of her autobiography is a psychological document of 
unique importance for the study of the “ Dark Night.” 

As her consciousness of God was gradually extinguished, a 
sort of mental and moral chaos seems to have invaded Madame 
Guyon, and to have accompanied the more spiritual destitution 
and miseries of her state. “So soon as I perceived the 
happiness of any state, or its beauty, or the necessity of a 
virtue, it seemed to me that I fell incessantly into the contrary 
vice: as if this perception, which though very rapid was always 
accompanied by love, were only given to me that I might 
experience its opposite, in a manner which was all the more 
terrible because of the horror which I still felt for it. It was 
then, O my God, that the evil which I hated, that I did: and 
the good which I loved, that I did not.t I was given an intense 
perception of the purity of God; and so far as my feelings went, 
I became more and more impure: for in reality this state is 
very purifying, but I was then very far from understanding 
this. . . . My imagination was in a state of appalling confusion, 
and gave me no rest. I could not speak of Thee, oh my God, 
for I became utterly stupid; nor could I even grasp what was 


* Apparently Romans vii. 15, paraphrase; Madame Guyon’s quotations of 
Scripture seldom agree with the Vulgate. 


460 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


said when I heard Thee spoken of. Instead of that heavenly 
peace in which my soul had been as it were confirmed and 
established, there was nothing but the sorrow of hell.... 1 
found myself hard towards God, insensible to His mercies; I 
could not perceive any good thing that I had done in my whole 
life. The good appeared to me evil; and—that which is 
terrible—it seemed to me that this state must last for ever. 
For I did not believe it to be a state, but a true falling away. 
For if I had been able to believe that it was a state, or that it 
was necessary or agreeable to God, I should not have suffered 
from it at all.” 

In the midst of all this wretchedness she felt, she says, 
that this world as well as the next was now leagued 
against her. “ External crosses” of every kind, loss of health 
and friendship, domestic vexations, increased and kept pace 
with her interior griefs. Self-control and power of attention 
were diminished. She seemed stupefied and impotent, unable 
to follow or understand even the services of the Church, in- 
capable of all orison and all good works; perpetually attracted 
by those worldly things which she had renounced, yet quickly 
wearied by them. The neat edifice of her first mystic life was 
in ruins, the state of consciousness which accompanied it was 
disintegrated, but nothing arose to take its place. 

“Tt is an amazing thing,” says Madame Guyon naively, “ for 
a soul that believed herself to be advanced in the way of 
perfection, when she sees herself thus go to pieces all at once.” 2 

So, too, Suso, when he had entered the “ upper school ” of the 
spiritual life, was tormented not only by temptations and 
desolations, but by outward trials and disabilities of every kind: 
calumnies, misunderstanding, difficulties, pains. “It seemed at 
this time as if God had given permission both to men and 
demons to torment the Servitor,” he says.3 This sense of a 
generally inimical atmosphere, and of the dimness and heipless- 
ness of the Ego oppressed by circumstance, is like the vague 
distress and nervous sensibility of adolescence, and comes in 
part from the same cause: the intervening period of chaos 
between the break-up of an old state of equilibrium and the 
establishment of the new. The self in its necessary movement 


® Of. ctt., cap. Xxill. ? ** Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. vii. § 2. 
3 Leben, cap. xxii. 


~ 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 461 


towards higher levels of reality, loses and leaves behind certain 
elements of its world, long loved but now outgrown: as children 
must make the hard transition from nursery to school. Destruc- 
tion and construction here go together: the exhaustion and 
ruin of the illuminated consciousness is the signal for the 
onward movement of the self towards other centres: the feeling 
of deprivation and inadequacy which comes from the loss of 
that consciousness, is an indirect stimulus to new growth. The 
self is being pushed into a new world where it does not feel 
at home; has not yet reached the point at which it enters 
into conscious possession of its second, or adult life. 

“Thou hast been a child at the breast, a spoiled child,” said 
the Eternal Wisdom to Suso. “Now I will withdraw all this.” 
In the resulting darkness and confusion, when the old and 
known supports are thus withdrawn, the self can do little but 
surrender itself to the inevitable process of things: to the opera- 
tion of that unresting Spirit of Life which is pressing it on 
towards a new and higher state, in which it shall not only see 
Reality but de real. | 

Psychologically, then, the “ Dark Night of the Soul” is due 
to the double fact of the exhaustion of an old state, and the 
growth towards a new state of consciousness, It is a “ growing 
pain” in the great organic process of the self’s attainment of the 
Absolute. The great mystics, creative geniuses in the realm of 
character, have known instinctively how to turn these psychic 
disturbances to spiritual profit. Parallel with the mental 
oscillations, upheavals and readjustments, through which an 
unstable psycho-physical type moves to new centres of con- 
sciousness, run the spiritual oscillations of a striving and ascend- 
ing spiritual type. Gyrans gyrando vadit spiritus. The * 
machinery of consciousness, over-stretched, breaks up, and - 
seems to toss the self back to an old and lower level, where it 
loses its apprehensions of the transcendental world; as the 
child, when first it is forced to stand alone, feels weaker than it 
did in its mother’s arms. 

“For first He not only withdraws all comfortable observable 
infusions of light and grace, but also deprives her of a power to 
exercise any perceptible operations of her superior spirit and of 
all comfortable reflections upon His love, plunging her into the 
depth of her inferior powers,” says Augustine Baker, the skilled 


462 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


director of souls, here anticipating the modern psychologist. 
“Here consequently,” he continues, “her former calmness of 
passions is quite lost, neither can she introvert herself; sinful 
motions and suggestions do violently assault her, and she finds 
as great difficulty (if not greater) to surmount them as at the 
beginning of a spiritual course. .. . If she would elevate her 
spirit, she sees nothing but clouds and darkness. She seeks 
God, and cannot find the least marks or footsteps of His 
Presence ; something there is that hinders her from executing 
_ the sinful suggestions within her, but what that is she knows 
not, for to her thinking she has no spirit at all, and, indeed, she 
is now in a region of all other most distant from spirit and 
spiritual operations—I mean, such as are perceptible.” ! 
Such an interval of chaos and misery may last for months, 


-or even for years, before the consciousness again unifies itself 


and a new centre is formed. Moreover, the negative side of 
this new centre, this new consciousness of the Absolute, often 
discloses itself first. The self realizes, that is to say, the 
inadequacy of its old state, long before it grasps the possibility 
of a new and higher state. This realization will take two forms: 
(a) Objective: the distance or absence of the Absolute which 
the self seeks; (4) Subjective: the self’s weakness and imper- 
fection. Both apprehensions constitute a direct incentive to 
action. They present, as it were, a Divine Negation which the 
self must probe, combat, resolve. 

The Dark Night, therefore, largely the product of natural 
causes, is the producer in its turn of mystical energy; and 
hence of supernatural effects. 

(2) So much for psychology. We now turn from a con- 
sideration of purely psychic processes to study the mystical or 
transcendental aspects of the Dark Night: to see what it has 
meant for those mystics who have endured it, and for those 
spiritual specialists who have studied it in the interests of 
other men. 

As in other departments of mystical activity, so here, we 
must beware of any generalization which tempts us to look upon 
the “Dark Night” as a uniform experience, a neatly-defined — 
state which appears under the same conditions, and attended 
by the same symptoms, in all the selves who have passed 


* «Holy Wisdom,” Treatise iii. § iv. cap. v. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 463 


through its pains. It is a name for the painful and negative 
state which normally intervenes between the Illuminative and 
the Unitive Life—no more. Different types of contemplatives 
have interpreted it to themselves and to us in very different 
ways; each type of illumination being in fact balanced by its 
own appropriate type of “dark.” 

In some temperaments it is the emotional aspect—the 
anguish of the lover who has suddenly lost the Beloved—which 
predominates : in others, the intellectual darkness and confusion 
overwhelms everything else. Some have felt it, with Madame 
Guyon and St. John of the Cross, as a “passive purification,” a 
state of limp misery, in which the self does nothing, but lets 
Life have its way with her. Others, with Suso and the virile 
mysticism of the German school, have put a more manly inter- 
pretation on its pains; finding in it a period of strenuous 
activity running counter to all the inclinations of the naturai 
man. Those elements of character which were unaffected by 
the first purification of the self—left as it were in a corner when 
the consciousness moved to the level of the illuminated life— 
are here roused from their sleep, purged of illusion, and forced 
to join the growing stream ; the “torrent” in Madame Guyon’s 
imagery, which sets towards the Infinite Sea. 

The Dark Night, then, is really a deeply human process, in 
which the self which thought itself so spiritual, so firmly estab- 
lished upon the supersensual plane, is forced to turn back, to 
leave the Light, and pick up those qualities which it had left 
behind. Only thus, by the transmutation of the whole man, not 
by a careful and departmental cultivation of that which we like 
to call his “spiritual” side, can Divine Humanity be formed: 
and the formation of Divine Humanity—the remaking of man 
“according to the pattern showed him in the mount ”—is the 
-mystic’s only certain ladder to the Real. “My humanity,” said 
the Eternal Wisdom to Suso, “is the road which all must tread 
who would come to that which thou seekest.”! This “hard 
saying” might almost be used as a test by which to distinguish 
the true and valid mystical activity of man from its many and 
specious imitations. The self in its first purgation has cleansed 
the mirror of perception; hence, in its illuminated life, has seen 
Reality. In so doing it has transcended the normal perceptive 


* “© Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,” cap. ii. 


464 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


powers of “natural” man, immersed in the illusions of sense. 
Now, it has got to Je reality: a very different thing. For this, 
a new and more drastic purgation is needed—not of the organs 
of perception, but of the very shrine of self: that “heart” which 
is the seat of personality, the source of its love and will. In 
the stress and anguish of the Night, when it turns back from 
the vision of the Infinite to feel again the limitations of the 
finite, the self loses the power to Do; and learns to surrender 
its will to the operation of a larger Life, that it may Be. As 
the alchemist, when he has found Luna, or Silver, is not con- 
tent, but tosses it back into the crucible in order that he may 
complete the “great work” and transmute it into Philosophic 
Gold: so that Indwelling Spirit which is the Artist of man’s 
destinies, labouring at his transmutation from unreal to real, 
tosses back the illuminated self into the melting-pot that it may 
become the raw material of Divine Humanity, the “ noble stone.” 

We must remember, in the midst of this cold-blooded 
analysis, that the mystic life is a life of love: that the Object 
of the mystic’s final quest and of his constant intuition is an 
object of wild adoration and supreme desire. “With Thee a 
prison would be a rose garden, oh Thou ravisher of hearts: 
with Thee Hell would be Paradise, oh Thou cheerer of souls,” 
said Jalalu ’d ‘Din.t | Hence forthe mystic who has-once known 
the Beatific Vision, there can be no greater grief than the with- 
drawal of this Object from his field of consciousness; the loss 
of this companionship, the extinction of this Light. Therefore, 
whatever form the “Dark Night” assumes, it must entail bitter 
suffering: far worse than that endured in the Purgative Way. 
Then the self was forcibly detached from the imperfect. Now 
’ the Perfect is withdrawn, leaving behind an overwhelming yet 
‘ impotent conviction of something supremely wrong, some final 
Treasure lost. We will now look at a few of the characteristic 
forms under which this conviction is translated to the surface- 
consciousness. 

A. To those temperaments in which consciousness of the 
Absolute took the form of a sense of divine companionship, and 
for whom the objective idea “God” had become the central fact | 
of life, it seems as though that God, having shown Himself, has 


* From the “‘ Mesnevi.” Quoted in the Appendix to ‘The Flowers or Rose 
Garden of Sadi.” 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 465 


now deliberately withdrawn His Presence, never perhaps to 
manifest Himself again. “ He acts,” says Eckhart, “as if there 
were a wall erected between Him and us.”! The “eye which 
looked upon Eternity ” has closed, the old dear sense of intimacy 
and mutual love has given place to a terrible blank. 

“The greatest affliction of the sorrowful soul in this state,” says 
St. John of the Cross, “is the thought that God has abandoned 
it, of which tt has no doubt; that He has cast it away into dark- 
ness as an abominable thing ... the shadow of death and the 
pains and torments of hell are most acutely felt, that is, the 
sense of being without God, being chastised and abandoned in 
His wrath and heavy displeasure. All this and even more the 
soul feels now, for a fearful apprehension has come upon it that . 
thus it will be with it for ever. It has also the same sense of 
abandonment with respect to all creatures and that it is an 
object of contempt to all, especially to its friends.” 2 

So, too, Madame Guyon felt this loss of her intuitive appre- 
hension of God as one of the most terrible characteristics of the 
“night.” “After Thou hadst wounded me so deeply as I have 
described, Thou didst begin, oh my God, to withdraw Thyself 
from me: and the pain of Thy absence was the more bitter to 
me, because Thy presence had been so sweet to me, Thy love 
so strong in me.... That which persuaded me, oh my God, 
that 1 had lost Thy love, was that instead of finding new 
strength in that strong and penetrating love, I had become more 
feeble and more impotent ... for I knew not then what it is 
to lose one’s own strength that we may enter into the strength 
of God. I have only learned this by a terrible and long experi- 
ence... . Thy way, oh my God, before Thou didst make me 
enter into the state of death, was the way of the dying life: 
sometimes to hide Thyself and leave me to myself in a hundred 
- weaknesses, sometimes to show Thyself with more sweetness 
and love. The nearer the soul drew to the state of death, the 
more her desolations were long and weary, her weaknesses 
increased, and aiso her joys became shorter, but purer and more 
intimate, until the time in which she fell into total privation,” 3 


* Meister Eckhart, pred. lvii. So too St. Gertrude in one of her symbolic visions 
saw a thick hedge erected between herself and Christ. 
? “*Noche Escura del Alma’’ (Lewis’s translation), 1. ii. cap. vi. 
3 Vie, pt. i, cap. Xxill. 
HH ; . ' 


466 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


When this total privation, this “mystic death,” as Madame 
Guyon calls it—describing its episodes with much imagery of a 
macabre and even revolting type—is fully established it involves 
not only the personal “Absence of God,” but the apparent 
withdrawal or loss of that impersonal support, that transcen- 
dent Ground or spark of the soul, on which the self has long 
felt its whole real life to be based. Hence, its last medium of 
- contact with the spiritual world is broken; and: as regards all — 
that matters, it does indeed seem to be “dead.” “That Some- — 
what which supports us in our ground is that which it costs us 
most to lose, and which the soul struggles with most violence to 
retain: because, the more delicate it is, the more divine and 
necessary it appears. .. . For what else does a soul desire in 
her labours, but to have this witness in her ground that she is a 
child of God? And the goal of all spirituality is this experience. 
Nevertheless, she must lose this with the rest ... and this is 
what works the true ‘death of the soul,’ for whatever miseries 
she might have, if this Somewhat in which the soul’s life consists 
were not lost, she would be able to support herself and never 
die. ... It is then the loss of this imperceptible thing, and the 
experience of this destitution, which causes the ‘death.’”+ 
Contact, that is to say, between consciousness and the “spark | 
of the soul” is here broken off: and the transcendental faculties 
retreating to their old place “below the threshold,” are “dead” 
so far as the surface-mind is concerned. 

B. In those selves for whom the subjective idea “ Sanctity” 
—the need of conformity between the individual character and 
the Transcendent—has been central, the pain of the Night is 
less a deprivation than a new and dreadful kind of lucidity. 
The vision of the Good brings to the self an abrupt sense of 
her own hopeless and helpless imperfection: a black “convic- 
tion of sin,’ far more bitter than that endured in the Way of 
Purgation, which swamps everything else. “That which makes 
her pain so terrible is that she is, as it were, overwhelmed by 
the purity of God, and this purity makes her see the least atoms 
of her imperfections as if they were enormous sins, because of 
the infinite distance there is between the purity of God and the 
-creature.” 2 


* “Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. vii. 
* Madame Guyon, of. cé¢., pt. i. cap. vii. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 467 


“This,” says St. John of the Cross again, “is one of the 
chief sufferings of this purgation. The soul is conscious of 
a profound emptiness, and destitution of the three kinds of 
goods, natural, temporal, and spiritual, which are ordained for 
its comfort ; it sees itself in the midst of the opposite evils, 
miserable imperfections and aridities, emptiness of the under- 
standing and abandonment of the spirit in darkness.” ! 

C. Often combined with the sense of sin and the “absence 
of God” is another negation, not the least amazing and dis- 
tressing part of the sufferings of the self suddenly plunged 
into the Night. This is a complete emotional lassitude: the 
disappearance of all the old ardours, now replaced by a callous- 
ness, a boredom, which the self detests but cannot overcome. | 
It is the dismal condition of spiritual es#uz which ascetic 
writers know so well under the name of “aridity,” and which . 
psychologists look upon as the result of emotional fatigue. 
To a person in this state, says Madame Guyon, “ everything 
becomes insipid. She finds no taste in anything. On the 
contrary every act disgusts her.”2 It seems incredible that 
the eager love of a Divine Companion, so long the focus of her 
whole being, should have vanished: that not only the tran- 
scendent vision should be withdrawn, but her very desire for 
and interest in that vision should grow cold. Yet the mystics 
are unanimous in declaring that this is a necessary stage in the 
growth of the spiritual consciousness. 

“When the sun begins to decline in the heavens,’ says 
Ruysbroeck, “it enters the sign Virgo; which is so called 
because this period of the year is sterile as a virgin.” © 
This is the autumn season in the cycle of the soul, when 
the summer heat grows less. “It completes the yearly travail 
of the Sun.” “In the same manner, when Christ, that glorious 
- sun, has risen to His zenith in the heart of man, as I have 
taught in the Third Mode, and afterwards begins to decline, 
to hide the radiance of His divine sunbeams, and to forsake 
man; then the heat and impatience of love grow less. Now 
that occultation of Christ, and the withdrawal of His light and 
heat, are the first work and the new coming of this Mode. 
Now Christ says inwardly to man, Come forth im the manner 


= §* Noche Escura del Alma,” oc. cit. 
* «Les Torrents,” pt. i. cag. vit. 


468 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


which I now show you; and man comes forth and finds 
himself to be poor, miserable, and abandoned. Here all the 
storm, the fury, the impatience of his love, grow cool: glowing 
summer turns to autumn, all its riches are transformed into 
a great poverty. And man begins to complain because of his 
wretchedness: for where now are the ardours of love, the 
intimacy, the gratitude, all the pleasures of grace, the interior 
consolation, the secret joy, the sensible sweetness ? How have 
_all these things failed him? And the burning violence of his 
love, and all the gifts which he received? How has all this 
died in him? And he like some learned clerk who has lost 
all his learning and his works . . and of this misery there is 
born the fear of being lost, and as it were a sort of half-doubt: 
and this is the lowest point to which one can fall without 
despair.” ! 

D. This stagnation of the emotions has its counterpart in 
the stagnation of the will and intelligence, which has been 
experienced by some contemplatives as a part of their negative 
state. As regards the will, there is a sort of moral dereliction: 
the self cannot control its inclinations and thoughts. In 
the general psychic turmoil, all the evil part of man’s inheri- 
tance, all the lower impulses and unworthy ideas which have 
long been imprisoned below the threshold, force their way into 
the field of consciousness. “I had thoughts of all the sins,” 
says Madame Guyon, “though without committing them.” 2 
“Every vice was re-awakened within me,’ says Angela of 
Foligno, “I would have chosen rather to be roasted than to 
endure such pains.” 3 

Where visual and auditory automatism is established, these 
irruptions from the subliminal region often take the form of evil 
visions, or of voices making coarse or sinful suggestions to 
the self. Thus St. Catherine of Siena, in the interval between 
her period of joyous illumination and her “spiritual marriage,” 
was tormented by visions of fiends, who filled her cell and 
“with obscene words and gestures invited her to lust.” She 
fled from her cell to the church to escape them, but they 
pursued her there: and she obtained no relief from this 
obsession until she ceased to oppose it. She cried, “I have 

® Ruysbroeck, ‘‘L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. ii. cap. xxviii. 

* Vie, pt. i. cap. xxiii. 

3 B. Angele de Fulginia, “ Visionum et Instructionum Liber,’ cap. xix. (Eng. 
trans. p. 15). 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 469 


chosen suffering for my consolation, and will gladly bear these 
and all other torments in the name of the Saviour, for as 
long as it shall please His Majesty.” With this act of sur- 
render, the evil vision fled: Catherine swung back to a state 
of affirmation, and was comforted by a vision of the Cross." . 

An analogous psychological state was experienced by St. 
Teresa; though she fails to recognize it as an episode in 
her normal development, and attributes it, with other spiritual 
adventures for which she can find no other explanation, to 
the action of the Devil. “ The soul,” she says, “laid in fetters, 
loses all control over itself, and all power of thinking of any- 
thing but the absurdities he puts before it, which, being more 
or less unsubstantial, inconsistent, and disconnected, serve only 
to stifle the soul, so that it has no power over itself; and 
accordingly—so it seems to me—the devils make a football 
of it, and the soul is unable to escape out of their hands. It 
is impossible to describe the sufferings of the soul in this 
state, It goes about in quest of relief, and God suffers it to 
find none. The light of reason, in the freedom of its will, 
remains, but it is not clear; it seems to me as if its eyes 
were covered with a veil. ... Temptations seem to press it 
down, and make it dull, so that its knowledge of God becomes 
to it as that of something which it hears of far away.” This 
dullness and dimness extends to ordinary mental activity, which 
shares in the lassitude and disorder of the inner life. “If it 
seeks relief from the fire by spiritual reading, it cannot find any, 
just as if it could not read at all. On one occasion it occurred 
to me to read the life of a saint, that I might forget myself 
and be refreshed with the recital of what he had suffered. Four | 
or five times, I read as many lines; and though they were | 
written in Spanish, I understood them less at the end than 
I did when I began: so I gave it up. It so happened to me on 
more occasions than one.”2 If we are reminded of anything 
here, it is of the phenomenon of “dark contemplation.” That 
dimness of mind which we there studied, is here extended to 
the most normal activities of the surface intelligence. The 
Cloud of Unknowing, rolling up, seems to envelop the whole 
self. Contemplation, the “way within the way,” has epitomized 


t E. Gardner, ‘*St. Catherine of Siena,” p. 20. 
* Vida, cap. xxx. §§ 13 and 14. 


470 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


the greater process of the mystic life. In both, the path to 
Light lies through a meek surrender to the confusion and 
ignorance of the “Dark.” The stress and exasperation felt in 
this dark, this state of vague helplessness, by selves of an 
active and self-reliant type, is exhibited by Teresa in one of 
her half-humorous self-revealing flashes. “The Devil,” she says 
of it, “then sends so offensive a spirit of bad temper that I 
think I could eat people up!” ? 

All these types of “darkness,” with their accompanying 
and overwhelming sensations of impotence and distress, are 
common in the lives of the mystics. We have seen them 
exhibited at length in Madame Guyon’s writings. Amongst 
innumerable examples, Suso and Rulman Merswin also ex- 
perienced them: Tauler constantly refers to them: Angela 
of Foligno speaks of a “ privation worse than hell.” It is clear 
that even Mechthild of Magdeburg, that sunshiny saint, knew 
the sufferings of the loss and absence of God. “Lord,” she says 
in one place, “since Thou hast taken from me all that I had of 
Thee, yet of Thy grace leave me the gift which every dog has 
by nature: that of being true to Thee in my distress, when I 
am deprived of all consolation. This I desire more fervently 
than Thy heavenly Kingdom!”2 In such a saying as this, 
the whole “value for life” of the Dark Night is abruptly 
revealed to us : as an education in selfless constancy, a “school 
of suffering love.” 

E. There is, however, another way in which the self’s 
sense of a continued imperfection in its relation with the Abso- 
lute—of work yet remaining to be done—expresses itself. In 
persons of a very highly strung and mobile type, who tend 
to rapid oscillations between pain and pleasure states, rather - 
than to the long, slow movements of an ascending conscious- 
ness, attainment of the Unitive Life is sometimes preceded 
by the abrupt invasion of a wild and unendurable desire to 
“see God”: to apprehend the Transcendent in Its fulness: 
which can only, they think, be satisfied by death. As they 
begin to outgrow their illuminated consciousness, these selves 
begin also to comprehend how partial and symbolic that 
consciousness—even at its best—has been: and their move- 


® Ob. cit., loc. cit. 
* **Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” pt, ii. cap. 25. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 471 


ment to union with God is foreshadowed by a passionate 
and uncontrollable longing for ultimate Reality. This passion 
is so intense, that it causes acute anguish in those who feel 
it. It brings with it all the helpless and desolate feelings of 
the Dark Night; and sometimes rises to the heights of a 
negative rapture, an ecstasy of deprivation. St. Teresa is 
perhaps the best instance of this rather rare method of 
apprehending the self’s essential separation from its home, 
which is also the subject of a celebrated chapter in the 
“Traité de l’Amour de Dieu” of St. Francis de Sales.t Thanks 
to her exceptionally mobile temperament, her tendency to 
rush up and down the scale of feeling, Teresa’s states of 
joyous rapture were often paid for by such a “great deso- 
lation ””—a dark ecstasy or “pain of God.” “As long as this 
pain lasts,” she says, “it is impossible to the soul to think 
of anything that has to do with her own being: from the 
first instant all her faculties are suspended as far as this 
world is concerned, and they only preserve their activity in 
order to increase her martyrdom. Here I do not wish to 
be accused of exaggeration. I am sure, on the contrary, 
that what I say is less than the truth; for lack of words 
in which it may be expressed. This, I repeat, is an entrance- 
ment of the senses and the faculties as regards all which 
does not contribute to make the soul feel this pain. For the 
understanding perceives very clearly why the soul is in 
affliction, far from her God: and our Lord increases her grief 
in showing her in a vivid light His sovereign loveliness. 
The pain thus grows to such a degree of intensity that in spite 
of oneself one cries aloud. This is what happened to the per- 
son of whom I have spoken [St. Teresa herself] when she was 
in this state. In spite of her patience, in spite of her familiasity 
with suffering, she could not suppress those cries: because, 
as I have said, this is not a pain which is felt in the body, 
but in the depths of the soul. This person then learned how 
much more intense are the pains of the soul than those of 
the body.” 2 

Moreover, the intense and painful concentration upon the 
Divine Absence which takes place in this “dark rapture” 

* L. vi. cap. xiii. 
* « El Castillo Interior,”” Moradas Sextas, cap. xi. 


472 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


induces all the psycho-physical marks of ecstasy. “ Although 
this ecstasy lasts but a short time, the bones of the body 
seem to be disjointed by it. The pulse is as feeble as if 
one were at the point of death, but whilst the natural heat 
of the body is lacking and almost extinguished, the soul on 
the contrary feels itself so burned up by the fire of its love, 
that with a few more degrees it would escape, as it desires, 
and throw itself into the arms of God. ... You will tell me, 
perhaps, that there is imperfection in this desire to see God: and 
this humbled soul ought to conform herself to His will Who 
keeps her still in this exile. Before, I answer, she could do 
this; and this consideration helped her to endure her life, 
But now, impossible! She is no longer mistress of her 
reason, and can think of nothing but the causes of her afflic- 
tion. Far from her Sovereign Good, how could she desire 
to live? She feels in an extraordinary solitude: neither the 
creatures here below, nor even the inhabitants of heaven, are 
companionable to her, if He whom she loves be not in the midst 
of them. There is no alleviation to be found in this world: 
all, on the contrary, torments her. She is like a person sus- 
pended in the air, who can neither plant her foot upon the 
earth, nor raise herself to heaven. She burns with a con- 
suming thirst, and cannot drink at the well which she desires. 
There is nothing in this world which can soothe the violence 
of that thirst: and besides, the soul would not consent to 
quench it with any other water than that of which our Lord 
spoke to the Samaritan woman, and this water is denied 
her.” = : 

Now all these forms of the Dark Night—the “ Absence 
of God,” the sense of sin, the dark ecstasy, the loss of the 
self’s old passion, peace and joy, and its apparent relapse 
to lower spiritual and mental levels—are considered by the 
mystics themselves to constitute aspects or parts of one and 
the same process: the final purification of the will or strong- 
hold of personality, that it may be merged without any 
reserve “in God where it was first.” The function of this 
process upon the Mystic Way is to cure the soul of the 
innate tendency to seek and rest in spiritual joys; to confuse 
Reality with the joy given by the contemplation of Reality. It 


* St. Teresa, 0. ctt., loc, cit. Compare the Vida, cap. xx. §§ 11 to 14. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 473 


is the completion of that ordering of disordered loves, that 
transvaluation of values, which the Way of Purgation began. 
The ascending self must leave these childish satisfactions; make 
its love absolutely disinterested, strong, and courageous, abolish 
all taint of spiritual gluttony. A total abandonment of the 
personal standard, of that trivial and egotistic quest of per- 
sonal success which thwarts the great movement of the Flowing 
Light, is the supreme condition of man’s participation in 
Reality. This is true not only of the complete participation 
which is possible to the great mystic, but of those unselfish 
labours in which the initiates of science or of art become to 
the Eternal Goodness “what his own hand is to a man.” 
“Think not,” says Tauler, “that God will be always caressing 
His children, or shine upon their head, or kindle their hearts 
as He does at the first. He does so only to lure us to 
Himself, as the falconer lures the falcon with its gay hood... . 
We must stir up and rouse ourselves and be content to 
leave off learning, and no more enjoy feeling and fire, and 
must now serve the Lord with strenuous industry and at 
our own cost.’’! 

This manly view of the Dark Night as a growth in 
responsibility—an episode of character-building—in which, as 
the “ Mirror of Simple Souls” has it, “the soul leaves that pride 
and play wherein it was full gladsome and jolly,” is charac- 
teristic of the German mystics. We find it again in Suso, 
to whom the angel of his tribulation gave no sentimental con- 
solations; but. only the stern command, “ Vereleter agite”— 
“Beaman!” “Then first,’ says Tauler again, “do we attain 
to the fullness of God’s love as His children, when it is no 
longer happiness or misery, prosperity or adversity, that draws 
us to Him or keeps us back from Him. What we should 
then experience none can utter; but it would be some- 
thing far better than when we were burning with the first 
flame of love, and had great emotion, but less true sub- 
mission.” 2 

In Illumination, the soul, basking in the uncreated Light, 
identified the Divine Nature with the divine light and 
sweetness which it then enjoyed. Its consciousness of the 


* Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent (Winkworth’s translation, p. 280), 
® Of. cit., loc. cit. 


474 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


transcendent has been felt chiefly as an increase of personal 
vision and personal joy. Thus, in that apparently selfless 
state, the “I, the Me, the Mine,” though spiritualized, still 
remained intact. The mortification of the senses was more 
than repaid by the rich and happy life which this mortifica- 
tion conferred upon the soul. But before real and permanent 
union with the Absolute can take place: before the whole 
self. can learn to live on those high levels where—its being 
utterly surrendered to the Infinite Will—it can be wholly 
transmuted in God, merged in the great life of the All; this 
separated life, this dependence on personal joys, must be done 
‘away. The spark of the soul, the fast-growing germ of 
divine humanity, must so invade every corner of character 
that the self can only say with St. Catherine of Genoa, “My 
me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.”! 
The various torments and desolations of the Dark Night 
constitute this last and drastic purgation of the spirit; the 
doing away of separateness, the annihilation of selfhood, even 
though all that self now claims for its own be the Love 
of God. Such a claim—which is really a claim to entire 
felicity, since the soul which possesses it needs nothing more 
—is felt by these great spirits to sully the radiance of their 
self-giving love. “All that I would here say of these inward 
delights and enjoyments,” says William Law, “is only this; 
they are not holiness, they are not piety, they are not per- 
fection; but they are God’s gracious allurements and calls 
to seek after holiness and spiritual perfection . .. and ought 
rather to convince us that we are as yet but Jdades, than 
that we are really men of God.... This alone is the true 
' Kingdom of God opened in the soul when, stripped of all 
selfishness, it has only one love and one will in it; when it 
has no motion or desire but what branches from the Love 
of God, and resigns itself wholly to the Will of God.. .. 
To sum up all in a word: Nothing hath separated us 
from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our 
separation from God. All the disorder and corruption and 
malady of our nature lies in a certain fixedness of our own 
will, imagination, and desire, wherein we live to ourselves, 
are our own centre and circumference, act wholly from our- 


* Vita e Dottrina, cap. xiv. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 475 


selves, according to our own will, imagination, and desires, 
There is not the smallest degree of evil in us but what 
arises from this selfishness, because we are thus all in _ all 
to ourselves. . . . To be humble, mortified, devout, patient in a 
certain degree, and to be persecuted for our virtues, is no 
hurt to this selfishness; nay, spzrztual-se/f must have all these 
virtues to subsist upon, and his life consists in seeing, know- 
ing, and feeling the bulk, strength, and reality of them. 
But still, in all this show and glitter of virtue, there is an 
unpurified bottom on which they stand, there is a selfishness 
which can no more enter into the Kingdom of Heaven than 
the grossness of flesh and blood can enter into it. What 
we are to feel and undergo in these last purifications, 
when the deepest root of all selfishness, as well spiritual as 
natural, is to be plucked up and torn from us, or how we 
shall be able to stand in that trial, are both of them equally 
impossible to be known by us beforehand.” ! 

The self, then, has got to learn to cease to be its “own 
centre and circumference”: to make that final surrender which 
is the price of final peace. In the Dark Night the starved and 
tortured spirit learns through an anguish which is, as Madame 
Guyon says, “itself an orison” to accept lovelessness for the 
sake of Love, Nothingness for the sake of the All; dies with- 
out any sure promise of life, loses when it hardly hopes to find. 
It sees with amazement the most sure foundations of its tran- 
scendental life crumble beneath it, dwells in a darkness which 
seems to hold no promise of adawn. This is what the German 
mystics call the “upper school of true resignation ” or of “ suffer- 
ing love”; the last test of heroic detachment, of manliness, of 
spiritual courage. Though such an experience is “ passive” in 
the sense that the self can neither enter nor leave it at will, it is 
a direct invitation to active endurance, a condition of stress in 
which work is done. Thus, when St. Catherine of Siena was 
tormented by hideous visions of sin, she was being led by her 
deeper self to the heroic acceptance of this subtle form of 
torture, almost unendurable to her chaste:and delicate mind. 
When these trials had brought her to the point at which she 
ceased to resist them, but exclaimed, “I have chosen suffering 


* “Christian Regeneration ” (The Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law, 
pp. 158-60). 


a 


476 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


for my consolation,” their business was done. They ceased. 
More significant still, when she asked, “ Where wast Thou, Lord 
when I was tormented by this foulness?” the Divine Voice 
answered, “I was in thy heart.”! 

“Tn order to raise the soul from imperfection,” said the Voice 
of God to St. Catherine in her Dialogue, “I withdraw Myself 
from her sentiment, depriving her of former consolations .. . 
which I do in order to humiliate her, and cause her to seek Me 
in truth, and to prove her in the light of faith, so that she come 
to prudence. Then, if she love Me without thought of self, and 
with lively faith and with hatred of her own sensuality, she 
rejoices in the time of trouble, deeming herself unworthy of 
peace and quietness of mind. Now comes the second of the 
three things of which I told thee, that is to say: how the soul 
arrives at perfection, and what she does when she is perfect. 
That is what she does. Though she perceives that I have 
withdrawn Myself, she does not, on that account, look back; 
but perseveres with humility in her exercises, remaining barred 
in the house of self-knowledge, and, continuing to dwell therein, 
awaits with lively faith the coming of the Holy Spirit, that is of 
Me, who am the Fire of Love. ... This is what the soul does 
in order to rise from imperfection and arrive at perfection, and 
it is to this end, namely, that she may arrive at perfection, that I 
withdraw from her, not by grace, but by sentiment. Once more 
do I leave her so that she may see and know her defects, so that 
feeling herself deprived of consolation and afflicted by pain, she 
may recognize her own weakness, and learn how incapable she 
is of stability or perseverance, thus cutting down to the very 
root of spiritual self-love: for this should be the end and 
purpose of all her self-knowledge, to rise above herself, mount- 
ing the throne of conscience, and not permitting the sentiment 
of imperfect love to turn again in its death-struggle, but, with 
correction and reproof, digging up the root of self-love with the 
knife of self-hatred and the love of virtue.” 2 

“Digging up the root of self-love with the knife of self- 
hatred ”—here we see the mystical reason of that bitter self- 
contempt and sense of helplessness which overwhelms the soul 
in the Dark Night. Such a sense of helplessness is really, the 
mystics say, a mark of progress: of deeper initiation into that 


* Vide supra, p. 460. ? Dialogo, cap. Ixiii. 





THE DARK: NIGHT OF THE SOUL 477 





sphere of reality to which it is not yet acclimatized, and which 
‘brings with it a growing consciousness of the appalling disparity 
‘between that Reality, that Perfection, and the imperfect soul. 
_ The self is in the dark because it is blinded by a Light greater 
than it can bear. “The more clear the light, the more does it 
blind the eyes of the owl, and the stronger the sun’s rays the 
more it blinds the visual organs; overcoming them, by reason 
of their weakness, and depriving them of the power of seeing. 
So the divine light of contemplation, when it beats on the soul 
not yet perfectly enlightened, causes spiritual darkness, not only 
because it surpasses its strength, but because it blinds it and 
deprives it of its natural perceptions. ... As eyes weakened 
and clouded by humours suffer pain when the clear light beats 
upon them, so the soul, by reason of its impurity, suffers exceed- 
ingly when the divine light really shines upon it. And when 
the rays of this pure light shine upon the soul, in order to expel 
its impurities, the soul perceives itself to be so unclean and miser- 
able that it seems as if God had set Himself against it, and itself 
were set against God. ... Wonderful and piteous sight! so 
ereat are the weakness and impurity of the soul that the hand of 
God, so soft and so gentle, is felt to be so heavy and oppressive, 
though neither pressing nor resting on it, but merely touching it, 
and that, too, most mercifully ; for He touches the soul, not to 
chastise it, but to load it with His graces.” ? 

The Dark Night then, whichever way we look at it, is a 
state of disharmony; of imperfect adaptation to environment. 
The self, unaccustomed to that direct contact of the Absolute 
which is destined to become the Source of its vitality and its 
joy, feels the “soft and gentle touch” of the Following Love as 
unbearable in its weight. The “self-naughting ” or “ purification 
of the will,” which here takes place, is the struggle to resolve that 
disharmony, to purge away the somewhat which still sets itself 
up in the soul as separate from the Divine: and makes the clear 
light of reality a torment instead of a joy. So deeply has the soul 
‘now entered into the great stream of spiritual life, so dominant 
has her transcendental faculty become, that this process is 
accomplished in her whether she will or no: and in this sense it 
is, as ascetic writers sometimes call it, a “ passive purgation.” 
So long as the subject still feels himself to be somewhat he 


3 St. John of the Cross, ‘‘ Noche Escura del Alma,” 1. ii. cap. v. 


478 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


has not yet annihilated selfhood and come to that ground 
where his being can be united with the Being of God. : 

Only when he learns to cease thinking of himself at 
all, in however depreciatory a sense; when he abolishes even 
such selfhood as lies in a desire for the sensible presence 
of God, will that harmony be attained. This is the “naughting 
of the soul,” the utter surrender to the great movement of the 
Absolute Life, which is insisted upon at such length by all” 
writers upon mysticism. Here, as in purgation, the condition 
of access to higher levels of vitality is a death: a depriva-} 
tion, a detachment, a clearing of the ground. Poverty leaps” 
to the Cross: and finds there an utter desolation, without 
promise of spiritual reward. The satisfactions of the spirit must” 
now go the same way as the satisfactions of the senses. Even 
the power of voluntary sacrifice and self-discipline is taken 
away. A dreadful exzuz, a dull helplessness, takes its place. 
The mystic motto, J am nothing, I have nothing, I desire nothing, 
must now express not only the detachment of the senses, but 
the whole being’s surrender to the All. 

The moral condition towards which the interior travail is 
directed is that of an utter humility. “ Everything depends,” 
says Tauler, on “a fathomless sinking in a fathomless nothing- 
ness.” He continues, “If a man were to say, ‘ Lord, who art 
Thou, that I must follow Thee through such deep, gloomy, 
miserable paths?’ the Lord would reply, ‘I am God and Man, 
and far more God. If a man could answer then, really 
and consciously from the bottom of his heart, ‘Then I am 
nothing and less than nothing’; all would be accomplished, 
for the Godhead has really no place to work in, but ground 
where all has been annihilated. As the schoolmen say, when a 
new form is to come into existence, the old must of necessity be 
destroyed. ... And soI say: ‘If a man is to be thus clothed 
upon with this Being, all the forms must of necessity be done 
away that were ever received by him in all his powers—of 
perception, knowledge, will, work, of subjection, sensibility and 
self-seeking.’ When St. Paul saw nothing, he saw God. So also 
when Elias wrapped his face in his mantle, God came. All 
strong rocks are broken here, all on which the spirit can rest 
must be done away. Then, when all forms have ceased to 


‘ 
4 


* J.e., the pure essence of the soul, purged of selfhood and illusion. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 479 


exist, in the twinkling of an eye the man is transformed. 
Therefore thou must make an entrance. Thereupon speaks 
the Heavenly Father to him: “Thou shalt call Me Father, 
and shalt never cease to enter in; entering ever further in, 
ever nearer, so as to sink the deeper in an unknown and 
unnamed abyss; and, above all ways, images and forms, and 
above all powers, to lose thyself, deny thyself, and even unform 
thyself.” In this lost condition nothing is to be seen but a 
ground which rests upon itself, everywhere one Being, one Life. 
It is thus, man may say, that he becomes unknowing, unloving, 
and senseless.” ! 

It is clear that so drastic a process of unselfing is not likely 
to take place without stress. It is the negative aspect of 
“deification” : in which the self, deprived of “ perception, know- 
ledge, will, work, self-seeking ”—the I, the Me, the Mine—loses 
itself, denies itself, unforms itself, drawing “ever nearer” to the 
One, till “nothing is to be seen but a ground which rests upon 
itself’—the ground of the soul, in which it has union with God. 

“Everywhere one Being, one Life”—this is the goal of 
mystical activity ; the final state of equilibrium towards which 
the self is moving, or rather struggling, in the dimness and 
anguish of the Dark Night. “The soul,’ says Madame 
Guyon in a passage of unusual beauty, “ after many a redoubled 
death, expires at last in the arms of Love; but she is unable 
to perceive these arms. ... Then, reduced to Nought, there is 
found in her ashes a seed of immortality, which is preserved 
in these ashes and will germinate in its season. But she 
knows not this; and does not expect ever to see herself 
living again.” Moreover, “the soul which is reduced to the 
Nothing, ought to dwell therein; without wishing, since she 
is now but dust, to issue from this state, nor, as_ before, 
desiring to live again. She must remain as something which 
no longer exists: and this, in order that the Torrent may 
drown itself and lose itself in the Sea, never to find itself 
in its selfhood again: that it may become one and the same 
thing with the Sea.” 2 

So Hilton says of the “naughted soul,” “the less that it 
thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth 


* Sermon on St. Matthew (‘‘ The Inner Way,”’ pp. 204, 205). 
* “ Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. viii. 


480 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


for to perceive the gift of this blessed love; for then is love 
master, and worketh in the soul, and maketh it forget itself, 
and for to see and look on only how love worketh: and then © 
is the soul more suffering than doing, and that is pure 
love.” ! | 

The “mystic death” or Dark Night is therefore an aspect or 
incident of the self’s self-loss in the Abyss of the Divine 
Life; of that mergence and union of the soul with the Abso- 
lute which is the whole object of the mystical evolution of — 
man. It is the last painful break with the life of illusion, 
the tearing away of the self from that World of Becoming in 
which all its natural affections and desires are rooted, to 
which its intellect and senses correspond; and the thrusting 
of it into that World of Being where at first, weak and 
blinded, it can but find a wilderness, a “dark.” No 
transmutation without fire, say the alchemists: No cross, 
no crown, says the Christian. All the great experts of the 
spiritual life agree—whatever be their creeds, their symbols, 
their explanation—in describing this stress, tribulation, and _ 
loneliness, as an essential part of the way from the Many 
to the One. 

The Dark Night, then, brings the self to the threshold 
of that completed life which is to be lived in intimate union 
with Reality. It is the Entombment which precedes the 
Resurrection, say the Christian mystics; ever ready to de-— 
scribe their life-process in the language of their faith. Here 
as elsewhere—but nowhere else in so drastic a sense—the 
self must “lose to find and die to live.” . 

The Dark Night, as we have seen, tends to establish 
itself gradually; the powers and intuitions of the self 
being withdrawn one after another, the intervals of lucidity 
becoming rarer, until the “mystic death” or state of total) 
deprivation is reached. So, too, when the night begins to’ 
break down before the advance of the new or Unitive Life, | 
the process is generally slow, though it may be marked—as/ 
for instance in Rulman Merswin’s case—by visions atch 
ecstasies.2. One after another, the miseries and disharmonies 
of the Dark Night give way: affirmation takes the place of nega- 





* “ The Scale of Perfection,” bk. iii. cap. v. 
2 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,”’ p. 22. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 48] 


tion: the Cloud of Unknowing is pierced by rays of light. 
“When the old state of deprivation has reached its term,” 
says Madame Guyon, “this dead self feels little by little, 
yet without feeling, that its ashes revive and take a new 
life: but this happens so gradually that it seems to her that 
it is but a fancy, or a sleep in which one has had a happy 
dream. .. . And in this consists the last degree ; which is the 
beginning of the Divine and truly Interior Life which con- 
tains an infinite number of degrees, and wherein one may 
always go forward without end, even as this Torrent can 
always go forward in the Sea, and take therefrom the more 
qualities the longer it sojourns there.” ! 

The act of utter surrender then, which is produced by 
the Dark Night, has given the self its footing in Eternity: 
the abandonment of the old centres of consciousness has 
permitted movement towards the new. In each such forward 
movement, the Transcendental Self, that spark of the soul 
which is united to the Absolute Life, has invaded more and 
more the seat of personality; advanced in that unresting 
process which involves the remaking of the self in conformity 
with the Eternal World. In the misery and apparent stag- 
nation of the Dark Night, in that dimness of the spiritual 
consciousness, that dullness of its will and love, work has been 
done; and the last great stage of the inward transmutation 
accomplished. The self which comes forth from the night — 
is no separated self, conscious of the illumination of the Un- 
created Light, but the New Man, the transmuted humanity, 
whose life is ove with the Absolute Life of God. “The instant 
the two houses of the soul [the sensual and the spiritual] 
are tranquil and confirmed,” says St. John of the Cross, “ with 
the whole household of its powers and desires sunk in sleep 
and silence, as to all things of heaven and earth, the Divine 
Wisdom immediately in a new bond of loving possession 
unites itself to the soul, and that is fulfilled which is written, 
‘While quiet silence contained all things and the night was 
in the midway of her course, Thy omnipotent Word sallied 
out of heaven from the royal seats’ (Wisdom xviii. 14). 
The same truth is set before us in the Canticle, where the 
Bride, after passing by those who took her veil away and 


* Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. viii. 
II 


482 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


wounded her, saith, ‘When I had a little passed by them I 
found Him whom my soul loveth’ (Cant. iii, 4).”? 


So far, we have considered the Dark Night of the Soul 
from a somewhat academic point of view. We have tried to 
dissect and describe it: have seen it through the medium of 
literature rather than of life. Such a proceeding has obvious 
disadvantages when dealing with any organic process: and in 
its application to the spiritual life of man, these disadvan- 
tages are increased. Moreover, our chief example, ‘‘from the 
life” Madame Guyon, valuable as her passion for self analysis 
makes her to the student of mystic states, cannot be looked 
upon as a wholly satisfactory witness. Her morbid sentimen- 
talism, her absurd “spiritual self-importance” has to be taken 
into account and constantly remembered in estimating the 
value of her psychological descriptions. If we want to get a 
true objective idea of the Dark Night, we must see it in its 
wholeness as a part of the general life-process; not as a 
departmental experience. We must study the reactions of a 
self which is passing through this stage of development upon 
its normal environment, the content of its diurnal existence; 
not only on its intuition of the Divine. 

As a pendant to this chapter, then, we will look at this 
“state of pain” as it expressed itself in the life of a mystic 
whose ardent, impressionable, and poetic nature reacted to 
every aspect of the contemplative experience, every mood 
and fluctuation of the soul. I choose this particular case— 
the case of Suso—(1) because it contains many interesting 
and unconventional elements ; showing us the Dark Night not 
as a series of specific events, but as a stage of development 
largely conditioned by individual temperament: (2) because, — 
being described to us at first hand, in the pages of his | 
singularly ingenuous Autobiography, it is comparatively free — 
from the reverent and corrupting emendations of the hagio- 
erapher. 

Suso’s “ Life,” from the 22nd chapter onwards, is one of the 
most valuable documents which we possess for the study of 
this period of the Mystic Way. We see in it—more clearly 


* “Noche Escura de] Alma,” 1. ii. cap. xxiv. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 483 


perhaps than its author can have done—the remaking of his 
consciousness, his temperamental reactions to the ceaseless 
and inexorable travail of his deeper self: so different in type 
from those of Madame Guyon and St. Teresa. There is a 
note of virile activity about these trials and purifications, an 
insistence upon the heroic aspect of the spiritual life, which 
most of us find far more sympathetic than Madame Guyon’s 
elaborate discourses on resignation and holy passivity, or 
even St. Teresa’s “dark ecstasies” of insatiable desire. 

The chapter in which Suso’s entrance into this “Second 
Mystic Life” of deprivation is described is called “How the 
Servitor was led into the School of True Resignation.” 
Characteristically, this inward experience expressed itself in 
a series of dramatic visions; visions of that “dynamic” 
kind which we have noticed as a common accompaniment 
of the crisis in which the mystic self moves to a new level 
of consciousness.t It followed the long period of constant 
mortification and intermittent illumination which lasted, as he 
tells us, from his eighteenth to his fortieth year: and con- 
stituted the first cycle of his spiritual life. At the end of 
that time, “God showed him that all this severity and these 
penances were but a good beginning, that by these he had 
triumphed over the unruly sensual man: but that now he 
must exert himself in another manner if he desired to 
advance in the Way.”2 

In two of these visions—these vivid interior dramas—we 
seem to see Suso’s developed mystical consciousness running 
ahead of its experience, reading the hidden book of its own 
future, probing its own spiritual necessities; and presenting 
the results to the backward and unwilling surface-mind. 
This growing mystic consciousness is already aware of fetters 
which the normal Suso does not feel. Its eyes open upon 
the soul’s true country, it sees the path which it must tread 
to perfect freedom ; the difference between the quality of that 
freedom and the spirituality which Suso thinks that he has 
attained. The first of these visions is that of the Upper 
School; the second is that in which he is called to put 
upon him the armour of a knight. 

“One night after matins, the Servitor being seated in his 


* Vide supra, p. 348. ? Leben, cap. xx. 


484 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


chair, and plunged in deep thought, he was rapt from his 
senses. And it seemed to him that he saw in a vision a 
magnificent young man descend from Heaven before him, 
and say, “Thou hast been long enough in the Lower School, 
and hast there sufficiently applied thyself. Come, then, with 
me; and I will introduce thee into the highest school that 
exists in this world.t There, thou shalt apply thyself to the 
study of that science which will procure thee the veritable : 
peace of God; and which will bring thy holy beginning to a 
happy end.” Then the Servitor rose, full of joy ; and it seemed 
to him that the young man took him by the hand and led 
him into a spiritual country, wherein there was a fair house - 
inhabited by spiritual men: for here lived those who applied - 
themselves to the study of this science. As soon as he 
entered it, these received him kindly, and amiably saluted 
him. And at once they went to the supreme Master, and 
told him that a man was come, who desired to be his 
disciple and to learn his science. And he said, “Let him 
come before me, that I may see whether he please me.” 
And when the supreme Master saw the Servitor, he smiled 
on him very kindly, and said, “Know that this guest is able 
to become a good disciple of our high science, if he will 
bear with patience the hard probation: for it is necessary 
that he be tried inwardly.” 

“The Servitor did not then understand these enigmatic 
words. He turned toward the young man who had brought 
him and asked, “Well, my dear comrade, what then is this ~ 
Upper School and this science of which you have spoken 
to me?” The young man replied thus: “In this Upper 
School they teach the science of Perfect Self-abandonment ; 
that is to say, that a man is here taught to renounce him- 
self. so utterly that, in all those circumstances in which God 
is manifested, either by Himself or in His creatures, the man\ 
applies himself only to remaining calm and unmoved, 
renouncing so far as is possible all human frailty.” And 

* These expressions, the Upper and Lower School of the Holy Spirit, as applied 
to the first and second mystic life, were common to the whole group of ‘‘ Friends of 
God,” and appear frequently in their works. Vide supra, p. 441, Rulman Merswin’s 
‘Vision of Nine Rocks,” where the man who has ‘‘ gazed upon his Origin’’ is ~ 


said to have been in the Upper School of the Holy Spirit; 7z.e., to have been 
united to God. / 


\ 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 485 


shortly after this discourse, the Servitor came to himself... 
and, talking to himself, he said, “Examine thyself inwardly 
and thou wilt see that thou hast still much self-will: thou 
wilt observe, that with all thy mortifications which thou hast 
inflicted on thyself, thou canst not yet endure external 
vexations. Thou art like a hare hiding in a bush, who is 
frightened by the whispering of the leaves. Thou also art 
frightened every day by the griefs that come to thee: thou 
dost turn pale at the sight of those who speak against thee: 
when thou dost fear to succumb, thou takest flight; when 
thou oughtest to present thyself with simplicity, thou dost 
hide thyself. When they praise thee, thou art happy: when 
they blame thee, thou art sad. Truly it is very needful for 
thee that thou shouldst go to an Upper School.” ! 

Some weeks later, when he had been rejoicing in the new 
bodily comfort which resulted from his relinquishment of all 
outward mortifications, Suso received a still more pointed 
lesson on his need of moral courage. He was sitting on his 
bed and meditating on the words of Job “ Militia est.” “The 
life of man upon the earth is like unto that of a knight” :2 
“and during this meditation, he was once more rapt from his 
senses, and it seemed to him that he saw coming towards 
him a fair youth of manly bearing, who held in his hands the 
spurs and the other apparel which knights are accustomed 
to wear. And he drew near to the Servitor, and clothed him 
in a coat of mail, and said to him, “Oh, knight! hitherto 
thou hast been but a squire, but now it is God’s will that 
thou be raised to knighthood.” And the Servitor gazed at 
his spurs, and said with much amazement in his heart, “ Alas, 
my God! what has befallen me? what have I become? must 
I indeed be a knight? I had far rather remain in peace.” 
* Then he said to the young man, “Since it is God’s will that 
I should be a knight I had rather have won my spurs in 
battle; for this would have been more glorious.” The young 
man turned away and began to laugh: and said to him, 
“Have no fear! thou shalt have battles enough. He who 
would play a valiant part in the spiritual chivalry of God 
must endure more numerous and more dreadful combats than 
any which were encountered by the proud heroes of ancient 


* Leben, cap. xxi. 2 Job vii. 1 (Vulgate). 


486 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


days, of whom the world tells and sings the knightly deeds. 
It is not that God desires to free thee from thy burdens ; 


; 


} 


He would only change them, and make them far heavier © 


than they have ever been.” Then the Servitor said, “Oh, Lord, 
show me my pains in advance, in order that I may know 
them.” The Lord replied, “ No, it is better that thou know 
nothing, !est thou shouldst hesitate. But amongst the innu- 
merable pains which thou wilt have to support, I will tell 
thee three. The first is this. Hitherto it is thou who hast 
scourged thyself, with thine own hands: thou didst cease when 
it seemed good to thee, and thou hadst compassion on thyself. 


Now, I would take thee from thyself, and cast thee without ~ 


defence into the hands of strangers who shall scourge thee. 
Thou shalt see the ruin of thy reputation. Thou shalt be 
an object of contempt to blinded men; and thou shalt suffer 
more from this than from the wounds made by the points 
of thy cross. When thou didst give thyself up to thy penances 
thou wert exalted and admired. Now thou shalt be abased 
and annihilated. The second pain is this: Although thou 
didst inflict on thyself many cruel tortures, still by God’s 
grace there remained to thee a tender and loving disposition. 
It shall befall thee, that there where thou hadst thought to 
find a special and a faithful love, thou shalt find nought but 
unfaithfulness, great sufferings, and great griefs. Thy trials 
shall be so many that those men who have any love for 
thee shall suffer with thee by compassion. The third pain 
is this: hitherto thou hast been but a child at the breast, a 
spoiled child. Thou hast been immersed in the divine 
sweetness like a fish in the sea. Now I will withdraw all 
this. It is my will that thou shouldst be deprived of it, 
and that thou suffer from this privation; that thou shouldst _ 


be abandoned of God and of man, that thou shouldst be — 


publicly persecuted by the friends of thine enemies. /I will 
tell it thee in a word: all thou shalt undertake, that might 
bring thee joy and consolation, shall come to nothing, and 
all that might make thee suffer and be vexatious \to thee 
shall succeed.” 2 

™ During the years of purgation Suso had constantly worn a sharp cross, the 


points of which pierced his flesh. 
2 Leben, cap. xxii. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 487 


Observe here, under a highly poetic and visionary method 
of presentation, the characteristic pains of the Dark Night 
as described by Madame Guyon, St. John of the Cross, and 
almost every expert who has written upon this state of con- 
sciousness. Desolation and loneliness, abandonment by God 
and by man, a tendency of everything to “go wrong,” a 
profusion of unsought trials and griefs—all are here. Suso, 
naturally highly strung and unbalanced, sensitive and poetic, 
suffered acutely in this mental chaos and multiplication of 
woes. He was tormented by a deep and heavy depression, 
so that “it seemed as though a mountain weighed on his 
heart”: by doubts against faith: by temptations to despair. 
These miseries lasted for about ten years. They were 
diversified and intensified by external trials, such as illnesses 
and false accusations; and relieved, as the years of purgation 
had been, by occasional visions and revelations. 

Suso’s natural tendency was to an enclosed life: to secret 
asceticisms, dreams, outbursts of fervent devotion, long hours 
of rapt communion with the Eternal Wisdom whom he loved. 
Half artist, half recluse, utterly unpractical, he had all the 
dreamer’s dread of the world of men. His deeper mystical self 
now ran counter to all these preferences. Like the angel 
which said to him in the hour of his utmost prostration and 
misery, “ Viriliter agite /”2 it pressed him inexorably towards 
the more manly part; pushing him to action, sending him 
out from his peaceful if uncomfortable cell to the rough- 
and-tumble of the world. Poor Suso was little fitted by 
nature for that rough-and-tumble: and a large part of his 
autobiography is concerned with the description of all that 
he endured therein. The Dark Night for him was emphatically 
an “active night”; and the more active he was forced to be, 
the darker and more painful it became. Chapter after chapter 
is filled with the troubles of the unhappy Servitor; who, once 
he began to meddle with practical life, soon disclosed his 
native simplicity and lost the reputation for wisdom and piety 
which he had obtained during his years of seclusion. 

There was not in Suso that high-hearted gaiety, that child- 
like courage, which made the early Franciscans delight to 
call themselves God’s fools. The bewildered lover of the 


* Leben, cap. xxiii. 2 [bid., cap. xxv. 


488 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Eternal Wisdom suffered acutely from his loss of dignity ; 
from the unfriendliness and contempt of his fellow-men. He 
gives a long and dismal catalogue of the enemies that he made, 
the slanders which he endured, in the slow acquirement of that 
disinterested and knightly valour which had been revealed to 
him as the essential virtue of the squire who would “ride 
with the Eternal Wisdom in the lists.” ? 

Suso was a born romantic. This dream of a spiritual 
chivalry haunts him: over and over again he uses the language 
of the tournament in his description of the mystic life. Yet 
perhaps few ideals seem less appropriate to this timid, highly- 
strung, impracticable Dominican friar: this ecstatic “ minne- 
singer of the Holy Ghost,” half-poet, half-metaphysician, racked 
by ill-health, exalted by mystical ardours, instinctively fearing 
the harsh contact of his fellow-men. 

There is no grim endurance about Suso: he feels every hard 
knock, and all the instincts of his nature are in favour of 
telling his griefs. A more human transcendentalist has never 
lived. Thanks to the candour and completeness with which 
he takes his readers into his confidence, we know him far 
more intimately than is the case with any of the other great 
contemplatives. There is one chapter in his life in which he 
describes with the utmost ingenuousness how he met a 
magnificent knight whilst crossing the Lake of Constance; 
and was deeply impressed by his enthusiastic descriptions of 
the glories and dangers of the lists. The conversation between 


the tough man at arms and the hypersensitive mystic is full of 


revealing touches. Suso is exalted and amazed by the stories 
of hard combats, the courage of the knights, and the ring 
for which they contend: but most astounded by the fortitude 
which pays no attention to its wounds. 

“And may not one weep, and show that one is hurt, 
when one is hit very hard?” he says. 

The knight replies, “No, even though one’s heart fails 
as happens to many, one must never show that one 1s dis- 
tressed. One must appear gay and happy; otherwise one is 
dishonoured, and loses at the same time one’s reputation and 
the Ring.” 

“These words made the Servitor thoughtful; and he was 


* ‘ Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,” cap. ii. 


/ 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 489 


greatly moved, and inwardly sighing he said, ‘Oh Lord, if the 
knights of this world must suffer so much to obtain so small a 
prize, how just it is that we should suffer far more if we are to 
obtain an eternal recompense! Oh, my sweet Lord, if only I 
were worthy of being Thy spiritual knight !’” 

Arrived at his destination, however, Suso was visited by 
fresh trials : and soon forgetting his valiant declarations, he began 
as usual to complain of his griefs. The result was a visionary 
ecstasy, in which he heard that voice of his deeper self, to which 
he always attributed a divine validity, inquiring with ill-con- 
cealed irony, “ Well, what has become of that noble chivalry ? 
Who is this knight of straw, this rag-made man? It is not by 
making rash promises and drawing back when suffering arrives, 
that the Ring of Eternity which you desire is won.” 

“ Alas! Lord,” says Suso plaintively, ‘the tournaments in 
which one must suffer for Thee last such a very long time!” 

The voice replied to him, “ But the reward, the honour, and 
the Ring which I give to My knights endures eternally.” * 

As his mystic consciousness grows, this instinct pressing 
him towards action and endurance grows with it. The inner 
voice and its visionary expression urges him on remorselessly. 
It mocks his weakness, encourages him to more active suffering, 
more complete self-renunciation: more contact with the un- 
friendly world. Vzriliter agtte! He is to be a complete 
personality ; a whole man. Instead of the quiet cell, the secret 
mortifications, his selfhood is to be stripped from him, and the 
reality of his renunciation tested, under the unsympathetic and 
often inimical gaze of other men. The case of Suso is one that 
may well give pause to those who regard the mystic life as a 
progress in passivity, a denial of the world: and the “ Dark 
Night” as one of its most morbid manifestations. 


* Leben, cap. xlvii. So Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ The gold Ring of our Covenant is greater 
than Heaver or Earth” (*‘De Contemplatione”). Compare Vaughan the Silurist 
(‘‘ The World’’). 

“‘T saw Eternity the other night, 
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, 
All calm as it was bright ; 
One whispered thus : 
*This Ring the Bridegroom did for none provide 
. But for His Bride.’” 


490 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


It is interesting to observe how completely human and 
apparently “unmystical” was the culminating trial by which 
Suso was “perfected in the school of true resignation.” “None 
can come to the sublime heights of the divinity,’ said the 
Eternal Wisdom to him in one of his visions, “or taste its 
ineffable sweetness, if first they have not experienced the bitter- 
ness and lowliness of My humanity. The higher they climb 
without passing by My humanity, the lower afterward shall be 
their fall. My humanity is the road which all must tread who 
would come to that which thou seekest: My sufferings are the 
door by which all must come in.”! It was by the path of 
humanity ; by some of the darkest and most bitter trials of 
human experience, the hardest tests of its patience and love, 
that Suso “came in” to that sustained peace of heart and union 
with the divine will which marked his last state. The whole 
tendency of these trials in the “ path of humanity ” seems, as 
we look at them, to be directed towards the awakening of those 
elements of character left dormant by the rather specialized 
disciplines and purifications of his cloistered life. We seem to 
see the “new man” invading all the resistant or inactive corners 
of personality : the Servitor of Wisdom being pressed against 
his will to a deeply and widely human life in the interests of 
Eternal Love. The absence of God whom he loved, the enmity 
of man whom he feared, were the chief forces brought to play 
upon him: and we watch his slow growth, under their tonic 
influence, in courage, humility, and love of his fellow-men. 

Few chapters in the history of the mystics are more touch- 
ing. than that passage in Suso’s Life2 “Where we speak of an 
extraordinary Trial which the Servitor had to bear.” It tells 
how a malicious woman accused him of being the father of her 
child, and succeeded for the time in entirely destroying his 
reputation. “And the scandal was all the greater,” says the 
Servitor with his customary simplicity, “because the rumour of 
that brother’s sanctity had spread so far.” Poor Suso was utterly 
crushed by this calumny, “wounded to the depths of his heart.” 
“Lord, Lord!” he cried, “every day of my life I have 
worshipped Thy holy Name in many places, and have helped 
to causeit to be loved and honoured by many men: and now 
Thou wouldst drag my name through the mud!” When the 


? ‘* Buchlein von der ewigen Weisheit,” cap. ii. ? Cap. xl. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 491 


scandal was at its height, a woman of the neighbourhood came 
to him in secret ; and offered to destroy the child which was 
the cause of this gossip, in order that the tale might be more 
quickly forgotten, and his reputation restored. She said further, 
that unless the baby were somehow disposed of, he would 
certainly be forced by public opinion to accept it, and provide 
for its upbringing. Suso, writhing as he was under the con- 
tempt of the whole neighbourhood, the apparent ruin of his 
career—knowing, too, that this calumny of one of their leaders 
must gravely injure the reputation of the Friends of God—was 
able to meet the temptation with a noble expression of trust. 
“T have confidence in the God of Heaven, Who is rich, and Who 
has given me until now all that which was needful unto me. 
He will help me to keep, if need be, another beside myself.” 
And then he said to his temptress, “Go, fetch the little child 
that I may see it.” 

“ And when he had the baby, he put it on his knees and 
looked at it: and the baby began to smile at him. And sigh- 
ing deeply, he said, ‘Could I kill a pretty baby that smiled at 
me? No, no, 1 had rather suffer every trial that could come 
upon me!’ And turning his face to the unfortunate little crea- 
ture, he said to it,‘Oh my poor, poor little one! Thou art but 
an unhappy orphan, for thy unnatural father hath denied thee, 
thy wicked mother would cast thee off, as one casts off a little 
dog that has ceased to please! The providence of God hath 
given thee to me, in order that I may be thy father. I will accept 
thee, then, from Him and from none else. Ah, dear child of 
my heart, thou liest on my knees ; thou dost gaze at me, thou 
canst not yet speak! As for me, I contemplate thee with a 
broken heart ; with weeping eyes, and lips that kiss, I bedew 
thy little face with my burning tears! ... Thou shalt be my 
son, and the child of the good God; and as long as heaven 
gives me a mouthful, I shall share it with thee, for the greater 
glory of God ; and will patiently support all the trials that may 
come to me, my darling son!’” How different is this from the 
early Suso ; interested in little but his own safe spirituality, and 
with more than a touch of the religious zsthete! 

The story goes on: “And when the hard-hearted woman 
who had wished to kill the little one saw these tears, when she 
heard these tender words, she was greatly moved: and her 


£92 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


heart was filled with pity, and she too began to weep and cry 
aloud. The Servitor was obliged to calm her, for fear that, 
attracted by the noise, some one should come and see what was 
going on. And when she had finished weeping the Brother 
gave her back the baby, and blessed it, and said to it, ‘Now 
may God in His goodness bless thee, and may the saints 
protect thee against all evil that may be!’ And he enjoined 
the woman to care for it well at his expense.” 

Small wonder that after this heroic act of charity Suso’s 
reputation went from bad to worse; that even his dearest 
friends forsook him, and he narrowly escaped expulsion from 
the religious life. His torments and miseries, his fears for the 
future, continued to grow until they at last came to their term 
in a sort of mental crisis. “His feeble nature broken by the 
pains which he had to endure, he went forth raving like one who 
has lost his senses ; and hid himself in a place far from men, 
where none could see or hear him ... and whilst he suffered 
thus, several times something which came from God said within 
his soul, ‘ Where then is your resignation? Where is that 
equal humour in joy and in tribulation which you have so 
lightly taught other men to love? In what manner is it, then, 
that one should rest in God and have confidence only in Him ?’ 
He replied weeping, ‘You ask where is my resignation ? But 
tell me first, where is the infinite pity of God for His friends F 
... Oh Fathomless Abyss! come to my help, for without 
Thee I am lost. Thou knowest that Thou art my only conso- 
lation, that all my trust is only in Thee. Oh hear me, for the 
love of God, all you whose hearts are wounded! Behold! let 
none be scandalized by my insane behaviour. So long as it 
was only a question of preaching resignation, that was easy : 
but now that my heart is pierced, now that I am wounded to 
the marrow... how can I be resigned?’ And after thus 
suffering half a day, his brain was exhausted, and at last he 
became calmer, and sitting down he came to himself: and 
turning to God, and abandoning himself to His Will, he said, 
‘If it cannot be otherwise, fiat voluntas tua’”* The act of sub- 
mission was at once followed by an ecstasy and vision, in which 
the approaching end of his troubles was announced to him. 
“ And in the event, God came to the help of the Servitor, and 
little by little that terrible tempest died away.” 


® Of. ctt., loc. cit. 


THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL 493 


Thus with Suso, as with St. Catherine of Siena and other 
mystics whom we have considered, the travail of the Dark 
Night is all directed towards the essential mystic act of utter 
self-surrender ; that fiat voluntas tua which marks the death 
of selfhood in the interests of a new and deeper life. He has 
learned the lesson of “the school of true resignation”: has 
moved to a new stage of reality. His last state, allowing for 
temperamental differences, is in essence the same as Madame 
Guyon’s “holy indifference”: a complete self-naughting, an 
utter acquiescence in the large and hidden purposes of the 
_ Divine Will. 


** Anzi é formale ad esto beato esse 
tenersi dentro alla divina voglia 
per ch’ una fansi nostre voglie stesse,’’! 


says Piccarda, announcing the primary law of Paradise. Suso 
has passed through the fire to the state in which he too can say, 
“Ta sua voluntate é nostra pace.’ The old grouping of his 
consciousness round “spiritual self” has come to its head and at 
last broken down. In the midst of a psychic storm parallel to 
the upheavals of conversion, “ mercenary love” is for ever dis- 
established, the new state of Pure Love is abruptly established 
in its place. Human pain is the price: the infinite joy peculiar 
_ to “free souls” is the reward. We may study the pain, but the 
nature of the joy is beyond us: as, in the Absolute Type of all 
mystic achievement, we see the Cross clearly but can hardly 
guess at the true nature of the resurrection life. 

Hence Suso’s description of his establishment in the Unitive 
Way seems meagre, an anti-climax, after all that went before. 
“ And later,” he says simply, “when God judged that it was 
time, He rewarded the poor martyr for all his suffering. And 
he enjoyed peace of heart, and received in tranquillity and quiet- 
ness many precious graces. And he praised the Lord from the 
very depths of his soul, and thanked Him for those same suffer- 
ings : which, for all the world, he would not now have been 
spared. And God caused him to understand that by this 
complete abasement he had gained more, and was made the 
more worthy to be raised up to God, than by all the pains 
which he had suffered from his youth up to that time.” 2 

Par. iii. 79. ‘‘ Nay, it is essential to this blessed being, to hold ourselves within 


’ the Will Divine wherewith our own wills are themselves made one,”’ 
* Loc. ctt. 


CHAPTER X 
THE UNITIVE LIFE 


What is the Unitive Life?—-Only the Mystics know—It is a state of transcendent 
vitality—Its importance for the race—The Mystics describe it under two forms: 
metaphysical and personal—Deification and Spiritual Marriage—Self-surrender— 
Freedom—Heroic activity—The psychological explanation—Delacroix and Eucken— 
Unification of personality on high levels—The Mystic’s explanation—Immersion in 
God—Transmutation—The doctrine of Deification—in philosophy—in religion—Its 
justification—It is not identification with God—it is the achievement of reality—Fire 
symbolism—Boehme—Richard of St. Victor—St. Catherine—Ruysbroeck—The 
Beatific Vision—Suso—Self-loss—The union of love—Jelalu ’d Din—The divine © 
companionship—The Epistle of Prayer—Spiritual Marriage—Divine Fecundity 
—Enhanced vitality—St. Teresa—The ‘‘ great actives’—Madame Guyon—The 
Mystics as parents of new spiritual life—The dual character of the Unitive Life— 
Being and Becoming—Fruition and work—Ruysbroeck the supreme demonstrator of 
this law—Its exhibition in the lives of the Mystics—The Unitive Life satisfies the 
three aspects of the Self—Knowledge, Will, Love—Mystic joy—an implicit of the 
deified life—Dante—Rolle—the Song of Love—St. Francis—St. Teresa—St. 
Catherine of Genoa—Conclusion 


HAT is the Unitive Life? We have referred to it 

V V often enough in the course of this inquiry. At last 
we are face to face with the necessity of defining its 

nature if we can. Since the normal man knows little about his 
own true personality, and nothing at all about that of Deity, 
the orthodox description of it as “the life in which man’s will 
is united with God,” does but echo the question in an ampler 
form ; and conveys no real meaning to the student’s mind. 
That we should know, by instinct, its character from within— 

as we know, if we cannot express, the character of our own 
normally human lives—is of course impossible. We deal here 
with the final triumph of the spirit, the flower of mysticism, 
humanity’s top note: the consummation towards which the 
contemplative life, with its long slow growth and psychic 


storms, has moved from the first. We look at a small but 
494 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 495 


ever-growing group of heroic figures, living at transcendent 
levels of reality which we, immersed in the poor life of illusion, 
cannot attain : breathing an atmosphere whose true quality we 
cannot even conceive. Here, then, as at so many other points 
in our study of the spiritual consciousness, we must rely for the 
greater part of our knowledge upon the direct testimony of the 
mystics ; who alone can tell the character of that “more abun- 
dant life” which they enjoy. 

Yet we are not wholly dependent on this source of infor- 
mation. It is the peculiarity of the Unitive Life that it is often 
lived, in its highest and most perfect forms, in the world; and 
exhibits its works before the eyes of men. As the law of our 
bodies is “earth to earth” so, strangely enough, is the law of 
our souls. Man, having at last come to full consciousness of 
reality, completes the circle of Being; and returns to fertilize 
those levels of existence from which he sprang. Hence, the 
-enemies of mysticism, who have easily drawn a congenial moral 
from the “morbid and solitary” lives of contemplatives in the 
earlier and educative stages of the Mystic Way, are here con- 
fronted very often by the disagreeable spectacle of the mystic 
as a pioneer of humanity, a sharply intuitive and painfully 
practical person: an artist, a discoverer, a religious or social 
reformer, a national hero, a “ great active” amongst the saints. 
By the superhuman nature of that which these persons accom- 
plish, we can gauge something of the supernormal vitality of 
which they partake. The things done, the victories gained 
over circumstance by the Blessed Joan of Arc or by St. Bernard, 
by St. Catherine of Siena, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Teresa, 
George Fox, are hardly to be explained unless these great 
spirits had indeed a closer, more intimate, more bracing contact 
than their fellows with that Life “which is the light of men.” 

We have, then, these two lines of investigation open to us: 
first, the comparison and elucidation of that which the mystics 
tell us concerning their transcendent experience, secondly, the 
testimony which is borne by their lives to the existence within 
them of supernal springs of action, contact set up with deep 
levels of vital power. In the third place, we have also such 
critical machinery as psychology has placed at our disposal ; 
but this, in dealing with these giants of the spirit, must be used 
with caution and humility. 


496 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


The Unitive Life, though so often lived in the world, is 
never of it. It belongs to another plane of being, moves 
securely upon levels unrelated to our speech ; and hence eludes 
the measuring powers of humanity. We, from the valley, can 
only catch a glimpse of the true life of these elect spirits, 
transfigured upon the mountain. They are far away, breathing 
another air: we cannot reach them. Yet it is impossible to 
over-estimate their importance for the race. They are our 
ambassadors to the Absolute. They vindicate humanity’s 
claim to the possible and permanent attainment of Reality; 
bear witness to the practical qualities of the transcendental 
life. In Eucken’s words, they testify to “the advent of a 
triumphing Spiritual Power, as distinguished from a spirituality 
which merely lays the foundations of life or struggles to main- 
tain them” :! to the actually life-enhancing power of the Love 
of God, once the human soul is freely opened to receive it. 

Coming first to the evidence of the mystics themselves, we 
find that in their attempts towards describing the Unitive 
Life they have recourse to two main forms of symbolic 
expression: both very dangerous, very liable to be misunder- | 
stood: both offering ample opportunity for harsh criticism to 
hostile investigators of the mystic type. We find also, as we 
might expect from our previous encounters with the symbols 
used by contemplatives and ecstatics, that these two forms of 
expression belong respectively to mystics of the transcendent- 
metaphysical and of the intimate-personal type: and that their 
formule, if taken alone, appear to contradict one another. 

(1) The metaphysical mystic, for whom the Absolute is 
impersonal and transcendent, describes his final attainment of 
that Absolute as dezfication, or the utter transmutation of the 
self in God. (2) The mystic for whom intimate and personal 
communion has been the mode under which he best appre- 
hended Reality, speaks of the consummation of this com- 
munion, its perfect and permanent form, as the Spiritual 
Marriage of his soul with God. Obviously, both these terms 
are but the self’s guesses concerning the intrinsic character 
of a state which it has felt in its wholeness rather than 
analyzed: and bear the same relation to the ineffable realities 
of that state, as our clever theories concerning the nature 


* «Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 140, 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 497 


and meaning of life bear to the vital processes of men. It 
is worth while to examine them; but we shall not understand 
them till we have also examined the life which they profess 
to explain. 

The language of “deification” and of “spiritual marriage,” 
then, is temperamental language: and is related to subjective 
experience rather than to objective fact. It describes on the one 
hand the mystic’s sudden, astonished awareness of a profound 
change effected in his own personality’—the transmutation 
of his salt, sulphur, and mercury into Spiritual Gold—on the 
other, the rapturous consummation of his love. Hence by a 
comparison of these symbolic reconstructions, by the discovery 
and isolation of the common factor latent in each, we may 
perhaps learn something of the fundamental fact which each © 
is trying to portray. 

Again, the mystics describe certain symptoms either as 
the necessary preliminaries or as the marks and _ fruits © 
of the Unitive State: and these too may help us to fix its 
character. 

The chief, in fact the one essential, preliminary is that 
pure surrender of selfhood, or “self-naughting,’ which the 
trials of the Dark Night tended to produce. Only the 
thoroughly detached, “naughted soul” is “free,” says the 
“Mirror of Simple Souls,” and the Unitive State is essentially 
a state of free and filial participation in Eternal Life. The 
chief marks of the state itself are (1) a complete absorption in 
the interests of the Infinite, under whatever mode It happens 
to be apprehended by the self, (2) a consciousness of sharing 
Its strength, acting by Its authority, which results in a complete 
sense of freedom, an invulnerable serenity, and usually urges 
the self to some form of heroic effort or creative activity : 
(3) the establishment of the self as a “power for life,” a 
centre of energy, an actual parent of spiritual vitality in other 


* Compare Dante’s sense of a transmuted personality when he first breathed the air 
of Paradise :— 
s*S’ io era sol di me quel che creasti 


novellamente, Amor che il ciel governi 
tu il sai, che col tuo lume mi levasti’’ (Par. i. 73). 


‘© Tf I were only that of me which thou didst new create, oh Love who rulest 
heaven, thou knowest who with thy light didst lift me up.” 
KK 


498 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


men. By collecting together these symptoms and examining 
them, and the lives of those who exhibit them, in the light 
of psychology, we can surely get some news—however fragmen- 
tary—concerning the transcendent condition of being which 
involves these characteristic states and acts. Beyond this even 
Dante himself could not go :— 


‘Trasumanar significar per verba 
non si poria.” * 


We will then consider the Unitive Life (1) As it appears 
from the standpoint of the psychologist. (2) As it is described 
to us by those mystics who use (a) the language of Deification, 
(6) that of Spiritual Marriage. (3) Finally, we will turn to 
the lives of its initiates; and try, if we can, to perceive it as 
an organic whole. 

(1) From the point of view of the pure psychologist, what 
do the varied phenomena of the Unitive Life, taken together, 
seem to represent? He would probably say that they indicate 
the final and successful establishment of that higher form of © 
consciousness which has been struggling for supremacy during 
the whole of the Mystic Way. The deepest, richest levels of 
human personality have now attained to light and freedom. 
The self is remade, transformed, has at last unified itseif; 
and with the cessation of stress, power has been liberated for 
new purposes. 

“The beginning of the mystic life,” says Delacroix, “intro- 
duced into the personal life of the subject a group of states 
which are distinguished by certain characteristics, and which 
form, so to speak, a special psychological system. At its 
term, it has, as it were, suppressed the ordinary self, and by 
the development of this system has established a new 
personality, with a new method of feeling and of action. 
its growth results in the transformation of personality: 
it abolishes the primitive consciousness of selfhood, and 
substitutes for it a wider consciousness: the total dis- 
appearance of selfhood in the divine, the substitution of a 
Divine Self for the primitive self.”2 If he be a psychological 
philosopher of Eucken’s school, the psychologist will say further 


B Pars 1.70, ? Delacroix, ‘“ Etudes sur le Mysticisme,” p. 197. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 499 


that man, in this Unitive State, by this substitution of the 
divine for the “ primitive” self, has at last risen to true freedom, 
“entered on the fruition of reality.” Hence he has opened 
up new paths for the inflow of that Triumphing Power which 
is the very substance of the Real; has wholly remade his 
consciousness, and in virtue of this total regeneration is 
“transplanted into that Universal Life, which is yet not 
alien but our own.”* From contact set up with this Universal 
Life, this “Energetic Word of God, which nothing can 
contain”—from those deep levels of Being to which his 
shifting, growing personality is fully adapted at last—he 
draws that amazing strength, that immovable peace, that 
power of dealing with circumstance, which is one of the most 
marked characteristics of the Unitive Life. “That secret 
and permanent personality of a superior type”3 which gave . 
to the surface-self constant and ever more insistent intimations 
of its existence at every stage of the mystic’s growth—his 
real, eternal self—has now consciously realized its destiny: and 
begins at last fully to de. In the travail of the Dark Night 
it has conquered and invaded the last recalcitrant elements 
of character. It is no more limited to acts of profound 
perception, overpowering intuitions of the Absolute: no more 
dependent for its emergence on the psychic states of contem- 
plation and ecstasy. The mystic has at last resolved the 
Stevensonian paradox; and is not truly two, but truly one. 
(2) The mystic, I think, would acquiesce in these descrip- 
tions, so far as they go: but he would probably translate 
them into his own words and gloss them with an explanation 
which is beyond the power and province of psychology. He 
would say that his long-sought correspondence with Tran- 
scendental Reality, his union with God, has now been finally 
established: that his self, though intact, is wholly penetrated— 
as a sponge by the sea—by the Ocean of Life and Love to 
which he has attained. “I live, yet not I but God in me.” He 
is conscious that he is now at length cleansed of the last stains 


of separation, and has become, in a mysterious manner, “that 
which he beholds.” 


* “ Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens,” p. 12. 
* Jbid., p. 96. 
3 Delacroix, of. ctt., p. 114 (vide supra, p. 327). 


500 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


In the words of the Siifi poet, the mystic journey is now 
prosecuted not only zo God but zz God. He has entered the 
Eternal Order; attained here and now the state to which the 
Magnet of the Universe draws every living thing. Moving 
through periods of alternate joy and anguish, as his spiritual 
self woke, stretched, and was tested in the complementary fires 
of love and pain, he was inwardly conscious that he moved 
towards a definite objective. In so far as he was a great mystic, 
he was also conscious that this objective was no mere act of 
knowing, however intense, exultant, and sublime, but a con- 
dition of being, fulfilment of that love which impelled him, 
steadily and inexorably, to his own place. In the image of the 
alchemists, the Fire of Love has done its work: the mystic 
Mercury of the Wise—that little hidden treasure, that scrap of 
Reality within him—has utterly transmuted the salt and sul- 
phur of his mind and his sense. Even the white stone of illumi- 
nation, once so dearly cherished, he has resigned to the crucible. 
Now, the great work is accomplished, the last imperfection is 
gone, and he finds within himself the “ Noble Tincture ”—the 
gold of spiritual humanity. 

(A) We have said that the mystic of the impersonal type— 
the seeker of a Transcendent Absolute—tends to describe the 
consummation of his quest in the language of dezficatzon. 

The Unitive Life necessarily means for him, as for all who 
attain it, something which infinitely transcends the sum total 
of its symptoms: something which normal men cannot hope to 
understand. In it he declares that he “partakes directly of 
the Divine Nature,’ enjoys the fruition of reality. Since we 
“only behold that which we are,” the doctrine of deification 
results naturally and logically from this claim. 

“Some may ask,” says the author of the “Theologia 
Germanica,”’ “what is it to be a partaker of the Divine Nature, 
or a Godlike [vergotzed, literally deified] man? Answer: he who 
is imbued with or illuminated by the Eternal or Divine Light 
and inflamed or consumed with Eternal or Divine Love, he is a 
deified man and a partaker ofthe Divine Nature.” ! 

Such a word as “ deification” is not, of course, a scientific 
term. It is a metaphor, an artistic expression which tries to 
hint at a transcendent fact utterly beyond the powers of human 


* “Theologia Germanica,” cap. xli 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 501 


understanding, and therefore without equivalent in human 
speech: that fact of which Dante perceived the “shadowy 
preface” when he saw the saints as petals of the Sempiternal 
Rose.t Since we know not the being of God, the mere 
statement that a soul is transformed in Him may convey to 
us an ecstatic suggestion, but will never give exact informa- 
tion: except of course to those rare selves who have experi- 
enced these supernal states. Such selves, however—or a large 
proportion of them—accept this statement as approximately 
true. Whilst the more clear-sighted amongst them are careful 
to qualify it in a sense which excludes pantheistic interpre- 
tations, and rebuts the accusation that extreme mystics preach 
the annihilation of the self and regard themselves as co-equal 
with the Deity, they leave us in no doubt that it answers to 
a definite and normal experience of many souls who attain 
high levels of spiritual vitality. Its terms are chiefly used by 
those mystics by whom Reality is apprehended as a state or place 
rather than a Person:? and who have adopted, in describing 
the earlier stages of their journey to God, such symbols as 
those of rebirth or transmutation. 

The blunt and positive language of these contemplatives 
concerning deification has aroused more enmity amongst the 
unmystical than any other of their doctrines or practices. it 
is of course easy, by confining oneself to its surface sense, to 
call such language blasphemous: and the temptation to do 
so has seldom been resisted. Yet, rightly understood, this doc- 
trine lies at the heart, not only of all mysticism, but also of 
much philosophy and most religion. It pushes their first prin- 
ciples toa logical end. “The wonder of wonders,” says Eucken, . 


_~whom no one can accuse of a conscious leaning towards mystic 


doctrine, “is the human made divine.”3 Christian mysticism, 
says Delacroix with justice, springs from “that spontaneous and 
half-savage longing for deification which all religion contains.” 4 
Eastern Christianity has always accepted it and expressed it in 
her rites. “The Body of God deifies me and feeds me,” says 


1 Par. xxx. I15-130 and xxxi. I-12. 

2 Compare p. 153. 

3 ** Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion,” p. 433. 

4 Of. cit., ix. But it is difficult to see why we need stigmatize as ‘‘half- 
savage ’ man’s primordial instinct for his destiny. 


502 -AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Simeon Metaphrastes, “it deifies my spirit and it feeds my soul 
in an incomprehensible manner.” ! 

The Christian mystics justify this dogma of the deifying of 
man, by exhibiting it as the necessary corollary of the Incar- 
nation—the humanizing of God. They can quote the authority 
of the Fathers in support of this argument. “ He became man 


that we might be made God,” says St. Athanasius.2 “I heard,’ . 
says St. Augustine, speaking of his pre-converted period, “ Thy - 


voice from on high crying unto me,‘I am the Food of the full- 
grown: grow, and then thou shalt feed on Me. Nor shalt thou 
change Me into thy substance as thou changest the food of thy 
flesh, but thou shalt be changed into Mine’”3 Eckhart there- 


fore did no more than expand the patristic view when he wrote, | 


“Our Lord says to every living soul, ‘I became man for you. 
If you do not become God for me, you do me wrong.’ 4 

If we are to allow that the mystics have ever attained the 
object of their quest, I think we must also allow that such attain- 
ment involves the transmutation of the self to that state which 
they call, for want of exact language, “deified.” The necessity 
of such transmutation is an implicit of their. first position: the 
law that “we behold that which we are, and are that which we 
behold.” Eckhart, in whom the language of deification assumes 
its most extreme form, justifies it upon this necessity. “If,” he 
says, “I am to know God directly, 1 must become completely 
He and He I: so that this He and this 1 become and are 
one kins 

God, said St. Augustine, is the country of the soul: its Home, 


says Ruysbroeck. The mystic in the unitive state is living in 
and of his native land ; no exploring alien, but a returned exile, © 


now wholly identified with it, part of it, yet retaining his personal- 
ity intact. As none know the spirit of England but the English ; 
and they know it by intuitive participation, by mergence, not by 
thought; so none but the “ deified ” know the secret life of God. 


This, too, is a knowledge conferred only by participation: by — 


living a life, breathing an atmosphere : by “union with that same 
Light by which they see, and which they see.”© It is one of those 


* Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Eastern Church. Prayers before Communion. 
2 Athanasius, De Incarn. Verbi, i. 108. 3 Aug. Conf., bk. vii. cap. x. 

4 Pred. lvii. 5 Pred. xcix. (‘‘ Mystische Schriften,” p. 122). 

* Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. iii. cap. v. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 503 


rights of citizenship which cannot be artificially conferred. 
Thus it becomes important to ask the mystics what they have 
to tell us of their life lived upon the bosom of Reality: and to 
receive their reports without prejudice, however hard be the 
sayings they contain. 

The first thing which emerges from these reports, and 
from the choice of symbols which we find in them, is that 
the great mystics are anxious above all things to establish and 
force on us the truth that by dezfication they intend no arrogant 
claim to identification with God, but as it were a transfusion 
of their selves by His Self: an entrance upon a new order of 
life, so high and so harmonious with Reality that it can only be 
called divine. Over and over again they assure us that person- 
ality is not lost, but made more real. “When,” says St. 
Augustine, “I shall cleave to Thee with all my being, then 
shall I in nothing have pain and labour; and my lzfe shall bea 
real life, being wholly full of Thee.”! “ My life shall be a reali 
life” because it is “ full of Thee.” The achievement of reality, 
and deification, are then one and the same thing: necessarily so, 
since we know that only the divine is the real.? 

Mechthild of Magdeburg, and after her Dante, saw Deity as a 
flame or river of fire that filled the Universe ; and the “ deified ” 
souls of the saints as ardent sparks therein, ablaze with that fire, 
one thing with it, yet distinct.3 Ruysbroeck, too, saw “ Every 
soul like a live coal, burned up by God on the hearth of His 
Infinite Love.’4 Such fire imagery has seemed to many of the 
mystics a peculiarly exact and suggestive symbol of the tran- 
scendent state which they are struggling to describe. No 
longer confused by the dim Cloud of Unknowing, they have 
pierced to its heart, and there found their goal: that uncreated 
and energizing Fire which guided the children of Israel through 
the night. 

By a deliberate appeal to the parallel of such great impersonal 
forces—to Fire and Heat, Light, Water, Air—mystic writers 
seem able to bring out a perceived aspect of the Godhead, 
and of the transfgured soul’s participation therein, which no 


Aug. Conf., bk. x. cap. xxviii. 
? Cf. Coventry Patmore, ‘The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘* Magna 
Moralia,” xxii. 3 Par. xxx. 64. 
* “*De Septem Gradibus Amoris,” cap. xiv. 


504 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


merely personal language, taken alone, can touch. Thus 
Boehme, trying to describe the union between the Word and 
the soul, says, “I give you an earthly similitude of this. Behold 
a bright flaming piece of iron, which of itself is dark and 
black, and the fire so penetrateth and shineth through the iron, 
that it giveth light. Now, the iron doth not cease to de; it is 
iron still: and the source (or property) of the fire retaineth its 
own propriety: it doth not take the iron into it, but it penetra- . 
teth (and shineth) through the iron; and it is iron then as well 
as before, free in itself: and so also is the source or property of 
the jive. In sucha manner is the soul set in the Deity; the 
Deity penetrateth through the soul, and dwelleth in the soul, 
yet the soul doth not comprehend the Deity, but the Deity com- 
prehendeth the soul, but doth not alter it (from being a soul) 
but only giveth it the divine source (or property) of the 
Majesty.” ! 

Almost exactly the same image of deification was used, 
five hundred years before Boehme’s day, by Richard of St. 
Victor; a mystic whom he is hardly likely to have read. 
“When the soul is plunged in the fire of divine love,” he says, 
“like iron, it first loses its blackness, and then, growing to white 
heat, it becomes like unto the fire itself. And lastly, it grows 
liquid, and losing its nature is transmuted into an utterly 
different quality of being.” “As the difference between iron that 
is cold and iron that is hot,” he says again, “so is the difference 
between soul and soul: between the tepid soul and the soul 
made incandescent by divine love.”2 Other contemplatives 
say that the deified soul is transfigured by the inundations 
of the Uncreated Light: that it is like a brand blazing in the 
furnace, transformed to the likeness of the fire. ‘“ These souls,” 
says the Divine voice to St. Catherine of Siena, “thrown into 
the furnace of My charity, no part of their will remaining 
outside but the whole of them being inflamed in Me, are like 
a brand, wholly consumed in the furnace, so that no one can 
take hold of it to extinguish it, because it has become fire. 
In the same way no one can seize these souls, or draw them 
outside of Me, because they are made one thing with Me 
through grace, and I never withdraw Myself from them by 


t “© The Threefold Life of Man,’ cap. vi. 88. 
* “De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Charitatis” (Migne, Patrologia Latina cxcvi.). 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 505 


sentiment, as in the case of those whom I am leading on to 
perfection.” t 

For the most subtle and delicate descriptions of the Unitive 
or Deified State, understood as self-loss in the “ Ocean Pacific” 
of God, we must go to the great genius of Ruysbroeck. He 
alone, whilst avoiding all its pitfalls, has conveyed the sugges- 
tion of its ineffable joys in a measure which seems, as we read, 
to be beyond all that we had supposed possible to human 
utterance. Awe and rapture, theological profundity, keen 
psychological insight, are here tempered by a touching sim- 
plicity. We listen to the report of one who has indeed heard 
“the invitation of love” which “draws interior souls towards 
the One” and says “Come home.” A humble receptivity, a 
meek self-naughting is with Ruysbroeck, as with all great 
mystics, the gate of the City of God. “Because they have 
given themselves to God in every action, omission or sub- 
mission,” he says of the deified souls, “ they possess a peace 
and a joy, a consolation and a savour, that none can com- 
prehend; neither the world, nor the creature adorned for 
himself, nor whosoever prefers himself before God. These 
interior souls, these men of lucid vision, have before their 
eyes whensoever they will the invitation of love, which draws 
them towards the One, and which says, Come home... 
Thus the spirit is caught by a simple rapture to the Trinity 
and by a threefold rapture to the Unity, and yet never does the 
creature become God: never is she confounded with Him. The 
union is brought about by Love; but the creature sees and 
feels between God and herself an eternal and invincible dis- 
tinction. However close the union may be, yet heaven and 
earth, which have come forth from the hands of God, still 
hide impenetrable secrets from the spirit of the contemplative. 
When God gives Himself to a soul, the chasm between herself 
and Him appears immense: but the powers of the soul, re- 
duced to simplicity, suffer a divine transformation. ... The 
spirit feels the truth and splendour of the divine union, yet still 
feels in itself an essential propensity towards its ancient state ; 
and this propensity safeguards in it the sense of the gap which 
is between God and itself. There is nothing more sublime then 
the sense of this distance: for the Unity is a force which draws 


* Dialogo, cap. Ixxviii. 


506 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


towards Itself all that which it has put into the world, both 
natural and supernatural. Further, illuminated men are caught 
up, above the reason, into the domain of naked vision. There 
the Divine Unity dwells and calls. Hence their bare vision, 
cleansed and free, penetrates the activity of all created things, 
and pursues it to search it out even to its heights. And this 
bare vision is penetrated and impregnated by the Eternal 
Light, as the air is penetrated and impregnated by the sun. 
The naked will is transformed by the Eternal Love, as fire by 
fire. The naked spirit stands erect, it feels itself to be wrapped 
round, affirmed and fixed by the formless immensity of God. 
Thus, far above reason, the created image is united by a 
threefold bond with its eternal type, the Source and Principle 
of its life.” * 

“When love has carried us above all things,” he says in 
another place, “above the light, into the Divine Dark, there 
we are transformed by the Eternal Word Who is the image of 
the Father; and as the air is penetrated by the sun, thus we 
receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and 
penetrating us. What is this light, if it be not a contemplation 
of the Infinite and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that 
which we are, and we are that which we behold, because our 
being, without losing anything of its own personality, is united 
with the Divine Truth which respects all diversity.” 2 

Here the personal aspect of the Absolute seems to be reduced 
to a minimum: yet all that we value in personality—love, action, 
will—remains unimpaired. We seem caught up to a plane of 
vision beyond the categories of the human mind: to the contem- 
plation of a Something Other—our home, our hope, and our 
passion, the completion of our personality, and the Substance of 
all that Is. Such an endless contemplation, such a dwelling 
within the substance of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, is the 
essence of that Beatific Vision, that “ participation of Eternity,” 
“of all things most delightful and desired, of all things; most 
loved by them who have it,’3 which theology presents to us 
as the objective of the soul. 

Those mystics of the metaphysical type who tend to use 


* Ruysbroeck, * Samuel’’ (Hello, pp. 199-201). 
* Jbid., ‘*‘ De Contemplatione ’’ (Hello, p. 145). 
8 St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘‘ Summa Contra Gentiles,” bk. iii. cap. Isii. 


LH UNITIVE LIFE 507 


these impersonal symbols of Place and Thing often see in 
the Unitive Life a foretaste of the Beatific Vision : an entrance 
here and now into that absolute life within the Divine Being, 
which shall be lived by all perfect spirits when they have cast 
oft the limitations of the flesh and re-entered the eternal order 
for which they were made. For them, in fact, the “ deified 
man,” in virtue of his genius for transcendental reality, has 
run ahead of human history: and attained a form of con- 
sciousness which other men will only know when earthly life is 
past. 

In the “ Book of Truth” Suso has a beautiful and poetic 
comparison between the life of the blessed spirits dwelling 
within the Ocean of Divine Love, and that approximate life 
which is lived on earth by the mystic who has renounced all 
selfhood and merged his will in that of the Eternal Truth. 
Here we find one of the best of many answers to the 
ancient but apparently immortal accusation that the mystics 
teach the total annihilation of personality as the end and object 
of their quest. “Lord, tell me,’ says the Servitor, “what 
remains to a blessed soul which has wholly renounced itself.” 
Truth says, “ When the good and faithful servant enters into the 
joy of his Lord, he is inebriated by the riches of the house 
of God ; for he feels, in an ineffable degree, that which is felt by 
an inebriated man. He forgets himself, he is no longer conscious 
of his selfhood; he disappears and loses himself in God, 
and becomes one spirit with Him, as a drop of water which 
is drowned in a great quantity of wine. For even as 
such a drop disappears, taking the colour and the taste of wine, 
so it is with those who are in full possession of blessedness. 
All human desires are taken from them in an indescribable 
manner, they are rapt from themselves, and are immersed 
in the Divine Will. If it were otherwise, if there remained 
in the man some human thing that was not absorbed, those 
words of Scripture which say that God must be all in all 
would be false. Hes being remains, but in another form, in 
another glory, and in another power. And all this is the result 
of entire and complete renunciation. ... Herein thou shalt_ 
find an answer to thy question ; for the true renunciation and 
veritable abandonment of a man to the Divine Will in the 
temporal world is an imitation and reduction of that self- 


508 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


abandonment of the blessed, of which Scripture speaks: and 
this imitation approaches its model more or less according 
as men are more or less united with God and become more 
or less one with God. Remark well that which is said of the 
blessed: they are stripped of their personal initiative, and 
changed into another form, another glory, another power. What © 
then is this other form, if it be not the Divine Nature and the 
Divine Being whereinto they pour themselves, and which pours 
Itself into them, and becomes one thing with them? And what 
is that other glory, if it be not to be illuminated and made 
shining in the Inaccessible Light? What is that other power, 
if it be not that by means of his union with the Divine Person- 
ality, there is given to man a divine strength and a divine 
power that he may accomplish all which pertains to his 
blessedness and omit all which is contrary thereto? And 
thus it is that, as has been said, a man comes forth from his 
selfhood.” ! 

All the mystics agree that the stripping off of personal 
initiative, the I, the Me, the Mine, utter renouncement, or “ self- 
naughting ”—self-abandonment to the direction of a larger Will 
—is an imperative condition of the attainment of the unitive 
life. The temporary denudation of the mind, whereby the 
contemplative made space for the vision of God, must now 
be applied to the whole life. Here, they say, there is a 
final swallowing up of that wilful I-hood which we ordinarily 
recognize as ourselves. It goes for ever, and something new 
is established in its room. The self is made part of the 
mystical Body of God; and, humbly taking its place in the 
corporate life of Reality, would “fain be to the Eternal Good- 
ness what his own hand is toa man.”2 That strange “hunger 
and thirst of God for the soul,” “at once avid and generous,” of 
which they speak in their most profound passages, here makes 
its final demand and receives its satisfaction. “ All that He has, 
all that He is, He gives: all that we have, all that we are, He 
takes,” 3 ; 

The self, they declare, is devoured, immersed in the Abyss ; 
“sinks into God Who is the deep of deeps.” In their efforts 


* Suso, ‘‘ Buchlein von der Wahrheit,” cap. iv. 
2 “‘Theologia Germanica,” cap. x. 
3 Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ De Contemplatione ” (Hello, p. 151). 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 509 


towards describing to us this, the supreme mystic act, and the 
new life to which it gives birth, they are often driven to the 
use of images which must seem to us grotesque, were it not 
for the flame which burns behind: as when Ruysbroeck cries, 
“To eat and be eaten! this is Union! ... Since His desire is 
immensity itself, to be wholly devoured of Him does not 
greatly amaze me.”! 

(B) At this point we begin to see that the language of 
deification, taken alone, will not suffice to describe the soul’s 
final experience of Reality. The personal and emotional aspect 
of man’s relation with his Source is also needed if that which 
he means by “union with God” is to be even partially expressed. 
Hence, even the most “transcendental” mystic is constantly 
compelled to fall back on the language of love in the endeavour 
to express the content of his metaphysical raptures: and forced 
‘in the end to acknowledge that the perfect union of Lover 
and Beloved cannot be suggested in the arid though doubtless 
accurate terms of religious philosophy. Such arid language 
eludes the most dangerous aspects of “divine union,” the 
pantheistic on one hand, the “amoristic” on the other; but 
it also fails to express the most splendid side of that amazing 
vision of truth. It needs some other more personal and 
intimate vision to complete it: and we shall find in the 
reports of those mystics of the “intimate” type to whom the 
Unitive Life has meant not self-loss in an Essence, but self- 
fulfilment in the union of heart and will, just that completing 
touch. 

The extreme form of this kind of apprehension of course 
finds expression in the well-known and heartily abused sym- 
bolism of the Spiritual Marriage between God and the Soul : 
a symbolism which goes back to the Orphic Mysteries, and 
thence descended vza the Neoplatonists unto the stream of 
Christian tradition. But there are other and less concrete forms 
of it, wholly free from the dangers which are supposed to lurk 
in “erotic” imagery of this kind. Thus Jalalu ’d Din, by 
the use of metaphors which are hardly human yet charged with 
passionate feeling, tells, no less successfully than the writer 
of the Song of Solomon, the secret of this union in which 
“heart speaks to heart.” 


* Hello, p. 223. 


510 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


‘““With Thy Sweet Soul, this soul of mine 
H[ath mixed as Water doth with Wine. 
Who can the Wine and Water part, 
Or me and Thee when we combine? 
Thou art become my greater self; 
Small bounds no more can me confine. 
Thou hast my being taken on, 
And shall not I now take on Thine? 
Me Thou for ever hast affirmed, 
That I may ever know Thee mine. 
Thy Love has pierced me through and through, 
Its thrill with Bone and Nerve entwine. 
I rest a Flute laid on Thy lips; 
A lute, I on Thy breast recline. 
Breathe deep in me that I may sigh ; 
Yet strike my strings, and tears shall shine.” * 


What the mystic here desires to tell us is, that his new life 
is not only a free and conscious participation in the life of 
Eternity—a fully-established existence on real and transcen- 
dental levels—but also the conscious sharing of an inflowing 
personal life greater than his own; a tightening of the bonds 
of that companionship which has been growing in intimacy 
and splendour during the course of the Mystic Way. This 
companionship, at once the most actual and most elusive fact 
of human experience, is utterly beyond the resources of speech. 
So too are those mysteries of the communion of love, whereby 
the soul’s humble, active, and ever-renewed self-donation 
becomes the medium of her glory: and “by her love 
she is made the equal of Love”—the beggar maid sharing 
Cophetua’s throne. 

Thus the anonymous author of the “ Mirror” writes, in one 
of his most daring passages, “‘I am God, says Love, ‘ For 
Love is God, and God is Love. And this soul is God by 
her condition of love: but I am God by my Nature 
Divine. And this [state] is hers by the justice of love. So 
that this precious one loved of Me, is taught, and is led of 
Me out of herself. . . . This [soul] is the eagle that flies high, 
so right high and yet more high than does any other bird ; for 
she is feathered with fine love.’” 2 , 

The simplest expression of the Unitive Life, the simplest 


* Jalalu ’d Din, *‘ The Festival of Spring” (Hastie’s translation, p. 10). 
2 “*The Mirror of Simple Souls,” f. 157, b. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 511 


interpretation which we can put on its declarations, is that it is 
the complete and conscious fulfilment here and now of this 
Perfect Love. In it certain elect spirits, still in the flesh, “ fly 
high and yet more high,” till “ taught and led out of themselves ” 
they become, in the exaggerated language of the “ Mirror,” “God 
by condition of love.” Home-grown English mysticism tried as 
a rule to express the inexpressible in homelier, more temperate 
terms than this. “I would that thou knew,” says the unknown 
author of the “ Epistle of Prayer,” “ what manner of working it is 
that knitteth man’s soul to God, and that maketh it one with 
Him in love and accordance of will after the word of St. Paul, 
saying thus: ‘Qu adhaeret Deo, unus spiritus est cum tllo’ ; 
that is to say: ‘Whoso draweth near to God as it is by such a 
reverent affection touched before, he is one spirit with God.’ That 
is, though all that God and he be two and sere in kind, never- 
theless yet in grace they are so knit together that they are but 
one in spirit ; and all this is one for onehead of love and accord- 
ance of will; and in this onehead is the marriage made between 
God and the soul the which shall never be broken, though all 
that the heat and the fervour of this work cease for a time, but 
by a deadly sin. In the ghostly feeling of this onehead maya 
loving soul both say and sing (if it list) this holy word that is 
written ijn the Book of Songs in the Bible, ‘Dzlectus meus mthi et 
ego ili, that is, My loved unto me, and I unto Him; under- 
standing that God shall be knitted with the ghostly glue of 
grace on His party, and the lovely consent in gladness of spirit 
on thy party.”? 

I think no one can deny that the comparison of the bond 
between the soul and the Absolute to “ ghostly glue,” though 
crude, is wholly innocent. Its appearance in this passage as an 
alternative to the symbol of wedlock may well check the un- 
critical enthusiasm of those who hurry to condemn at sight all 
“sexual” imagery. That it has seemed to the mystics appro- 
priate and exact is proved by its reappearance in the next cen- 
tury in the work ofa greater contemplative. “Thou givest me,” 
says Petersen, “ Thy whole Self to be mine whole and un- 
divided, if at least I shall be Thine whole and undivided. 
And when I shall be thus all Thine, even as from everlasting 


™ “The Epistle of Prayer.’’ Printed from Pepwell’s edition in ‘‘ The Cell of Self- 
knowledge,” edited by Edmund Gardner, p. 88. 


512 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Thou hast loved Thyself, so from everlasting Thou hast loved 
me: for this means nothing more than that Thou enjoyest 
Thyself in me, and that I by Thy -grace enjoy Thee in myself 
and myself in Thee. And when in Thee I shall love myself, 
nothing else but Thee do I love, because Zhou art in me and I 
in Thee, glued together as one and the selfsame thing, which hence- 
forth and forever cannot be divided.” 

From this kind of language to that of the Spiritual Marriage, 
as understood by the pure minds of the mystics, is but a step.? 
They mean by it no rapturous satisfactions, no dubious 
spiritualizing of earthly ecstasies, but a life-long bond “ that 
shall never be lost or broken,” a close personal union of will 
and of heart between the free self and that “ Fairest in Beauty” 
Whom it has known in the act of contemplation. 

The Mystic Way has been a progress, a growth, in love: 
a deliberate fostering -of the inward tendency of the soul 
towards its source, an eradication of its disorderly tendencies to 
“temporal goods.” But the only proper end of love is union: 
“a perfect uniting and coupling together of the lover and the 
loved into one.” 3 It is “a unifying principle,” the philosophers 
say ;4 life’s mightiest agent upon every plane. Moreover, just 
as earthly marriage is understood by the moral sense less as a 
satisfaction of personal desires, than as a part of the great pro- 
cess of life—the fusion of two powers for new purposes—so 
such spiritual marriage brings with it duties and obligations. 
With the attainment of a new order, the new infusion of 
vitality, comes a new responsibility, the call to effort and 


endurance on a new and mighty scale. It is not an act but a — 


state. Fresh life is imparted by which our lives are made 
complete: new creative powers are conferred. The self, lifted 


to the divine order, is to be an agent of the divine fecundity: © 
an energizing centre, a parent of transcendental life. “The — 


last perfection,” says Aquinas, to “supervene upon a thing, is 
its becoming the cause of other things. While then a creature 


* Gerlac Petersen, ‘“‘Ignitum cum Deo Soliloquium,” cap. xv. 


2 Compare Pt. I. Cap. VI. It seems needless to repeat here the examples there © 


given. 
3 Hilton, ‘‘ The Treatise written to a Devout Man,” cap. viii. 
4 Cf. Ormond, ‘‘ Foundations of Knowledge,” p. 442. ‘*When we love any 


being, we desire either the unification of its life with our own, or our own unification — 


with its life. Love in its innermost motive is a unifying principle.” 


oe ae a ies ae 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 513 


tends by many ways to the likeness of God, the last way left 
open to it is to seek the divine likeness by being the cause 
of other things, according to what the Apostle says, Dez enim 
sumus adjutores.” * 

We find as a matter of fact, when we come to study the 
history of the mystics, that the permanent Unitive State, or 
spiritual marriage, does mean for those who attain to it, first 
and above all else such an access of creative vitality. It means 
man’s little life invaded and enhanced by the Absolute Life: 
the appearance in human history of personalities and careers 
which seem superhuman when judged by the surface mind. 
Such activity, such a bringing forth of “the fruits of the Spirit,” 
may take many forms: but where it is absent, where we meet 
with personal satisfactions, personal visions or raptures—how- 
ever sublime and spiritualized—presented as marks of the 
Unitive Way, ends or objects of the quest of Reality, we 
may be sure that we have wandered from the “straight and 
narrow road” which leads, not to eternal rest, but to Eternal 
Life, “The fourth degree of love is spiritually fruitful,” 2 said 
Richard of St. Victor. Wherever we find a sterile love, a 
“holy passivity,’ we are in the presence of quietistic heresy ; 
not of the Unitive Life. “I hold it for a certain truth,” says 
St. Teresa, “that in giving these graces our Lord intends, as I 
have already said in this treatise, to fortify our weakness, that 
we may be made capable of following His example in the 
endurance of great pains.... Whence did St. Paul draw 
strength to support his excessive labours? We see clearly in 
him the effects of visions and contemplations which came indeed 
from God; not of a delirious fancy, nor the arts of the spirit 
of darkness. After the reception of such great favours, did he 
go and hide himself in order to enjoy in peace the ecstasy which 
overwhelmed his soul, without occupying himself with other 
things? You know that on the contrary he passed his whole 
days in apostolic labours, working at night in order to earn his 
bread. ... Oh my sisters! who can describe the point to 
which a soul where our Lord dwells in so special a manner 
neglects her own ease? How little honours affect her! How 


* «¢ Summa Contra Gentiles,” bk. iii. cap. xxi. 
2 «De Quatuor Gradibus Violent Charitatis”” (Migne, Patrologia Latina cxcvi, 
col. 1216 D). 
LL 


914 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


far she is from wishing to be esteemed in the least thing! When 
she possesses the ceaseless companionship of her Bridegroom, 
how could she think of herself? Her only thought is to please 
Him, and to seek out ways in which she may show Him her 
love. It is to this point, my daughters, that orison tends ; and, 
in the design of God, this spiritual marriage is destined to no 
other purpose but the zucessant production of work, work! And 
this, as I have already told you, is the best proof that the 
favours which we receive have come from God.”! “To give 
to our Lord a perfect hospitality ” she says in the same chapter, 
“Mary and Martha must combine.” 

When we look at the lives of the great theopathetic mystics, 
the true initiates of Eternity—inarticulate as these mystics 
often are—we find ourselves in the presence of an amazing, a 
superabundant vitality: of a “triumphing force” over which 
circumstance has no power. “The incessant production of 
work, work” seems indeed to be the object of that Spirit, 
by Whose presence their interior castle is now filled. 

We see St. Paul, abruptly enslaved by the First and Only 
Fair, not hiding himself to enjoy the vision of Reality, but 
going out single-handed to organize the Catholic Church. 
We ask how it was possible for an obscure Roman citizen, 
without money, influence, or good health, to lay these colossal 
foundations: and he answers, “ Not I, but Christ in me.” 

We see Joan of Arc, a child of the peasant class, leaving the 
sheepfold to lead the armies of France. We ask how this 
incredible thing can be: and are told “ Her Voices bade her.” 
A message, an overpowering impulse, came from the supra- 
sensible: vitality flowed in on her, she knew not how or why. 
She was united with the Infinite Life, and became Its agent, the 
medium of Its strength, “ what his own hand is to a man.” 

We see St. Francis, “ God’s troubadour,” marked with His 
wounds, inflamed with His joy—obverse and reverse of the 
earnest-money of eternity—St. Ignatius Loyola, our Lady’s 
knight—incurably romantic figures both of them—go out to 
change the spiritual history of Europe. Where did they find— 
born and bred to the most ordinary of careers, in the least spiri- 
tual of atmospheres—that superabundant energy, that genius for 
success which triumphed best in the most hopeless situations ? 


t ‘Fl Castillo Interior,” Moradas Sétimas, cap. iv. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 515 


Ignatius found it in the long contemplations and hard discipline 
of the cave of Manresa, after the act of surrender in which he 
dedicated his knighthood to the service of the Mother of God. 
Francis found it before the crucifix in St. Damiano, and re- 
newed it in the ineffable experience of La Verna; when “by 
mental possession and rapture he was transfigured of God.” 

We see St. Teresa, another born romantic, pass to the 
Unitive State after long and bitter struggles between her lower 
and higher personality. A chronic invalid over fifty years of 
age, weakened by long ill-health and by the terrible mortifica- 
tions of the Purgative Way, she deliberately breaks with her 
old career, leaves her convent, and starts a new life: coursing 
through Spain, and reforming a great religious order in the 
teeth of the ecclesiastical world. Yet more amazing, St. Catherine 
of Siena, an illiterate daughter of the people, after a three years’ 
retreat, consummates the mystic marriage, and emerges from 
the cell of self-knowledge to dominate the politics of Italy. 
How came it that these apparently unsuitable men and women, 
checked on every side by inimical environment, ill-health, 
custom, or poverty, achieved these stupendous destinies? The 
explanation can only lie in the fact that all these persons were 
great mystics, living upon high levels the theopathetic life. In 
each a character of the heroic type, of great vitality, deep 
enthusiasms, unconquerable will, was raised to the spiritual 
plane, remade on higher levels of consciousness, Each by sur- 
render of selfhood, by acquiescence in the large destinies of life, 
had so furthered that self’s natural genius for the Infinite that 
their human limitations were overpassed. Iience they rose to 
freedom and attained to the one ambition of the “naughted 
soul,” “I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own 
hand is to a man.” 

Even Madame Guyon’s natural tendency to passive states 
breaks down with her entrance on the Unitive Way. Though 
she cannot be classed amongst the greatest of its initiates, she 
too felt its fertilizing power, was stung from her “holy indiffer- 
ence” to become, as it were, involuntarily true to type. 

“The soul,” she says of the self entering upon Union—and 
we cannot doubt that as usual she is describing her own care- 
fully docketed “states”—“feels a secret vigour taking more 
and more strongly possession of all her being: and little by 


516 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


little she receives a new life, never again to be lost, at least 
so far as one can be assured of anything in this life. . . . This 
new life is not like that which she had before. It is a life in 
God. It is a perfect life. She no longer lives or works of 
herself: but God lives, acts and works in her, and this grows 
little by little till she becomes perfect with God’s perfection, 
rich with His riches, and loves with His love. ... She lives 
only with the life of God, Who being the Principle of Life, this : 
soul cannot lack anything. How greatly has she gained by 
her losses! She has lost the created for the Increate, the 
nothing for the All. All is given her: but not in herself but 
in God, not to be possessed of herself but to be possessed of 
God. Her riches are immense; for they are nothing less 
than God Himself. 

“TI confess,” she says again, “that I do not understand the 
risen and deified state of certain persons who remain, in spite 
of it, all their lives long in a state of impotence and deprivation : 
for here the soul resumes a veritable life. The acts of a 
risen man are vital acts: and if the soul after her resurrection 
remains without life, | say that she is dead or buried, but not 
risen. To be vzsez, the soul should be capable of all the acts 
which she performed before the time of her losses; and per- 
form them without difficulty, since she performs them in God.” 2 

This new, intense, and veritable life has other and even 
more vital characteristics than those which lead to “the per- 
formance of acts” or “the incessant production of work, 
work.” It is, in an actual sense, as Richard of St. Victor 
reminded us, fertile, creative, as well as merely active. In 
the fourth degree of love, the soul brings forth its children. 
It is the agent of a fresh outbirth of spiritual vitality into the 
world ; the helpmate of the Transcendent Order, the mother 
of a spiritual progeny. The great unitive mystics are each of 
them the founders of spiritual families, centres wherefrom 
radiates new transcendental life. The “flowing light of the 
Godhead” is focused in them, as in a lens, only that it may 
pass through them to spread out on every side. So, too, the 
great creative seers and artists are the parents, not merely 
of their own immediate works, but also of whole schools of 
art; whole groups of persons who acquire or inherit their 


* “Les Torrents,” pt. i. cap. ix. ? OD. cét., pt. ii. cap. i. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 517 


vision of beauty or truth. Thus within the area of influence 
of a Paul,a Francis, an Ignatius, a Teresa, an atmosphere of 
reality is created; and new and vital spiritual personalities 
gradually appear, meet for the work which these great founders 
set in hand. The real witness to St. Paul’s ecstatic life in 
God is the train of Christian churches by which his journey- 
ings are marked. Wherever Francis passed, he left Franciscans, 
“fragrant with a wondrous aspect,’ where none had _ been 
before: The Friends of God spring up, individual mystics, 
here and there through the Rhineland and Bavaria. Each 
becomes the centre of an ever-widening circle of transcendent 
life, the parent of a spiritual family. They are come, like 
their Master, that men may have life more abundantly: from 
them new mystic energy is actually born into the world. 
Again, Ignatius leaves Manresa a solitary : maimed, ignorant, 
and poor. He comes to Rome with his company already 
formed, and ablaze with his spirit; veritably his children, 
begotten of him, part and parcel of his life. 

Teresa finds the order of Mount Carmel hopelessly corrupt : 
all its friars and nuns blind to reality, indifferent to the obliga- 
tions of the cloistered life. She is moved by the Spirit to leave 
her convent and begin, in abject poverty, the foundation of new 
houses, where the most austere and exalted life of contempla- 
tion shall be led. She enters upon this task to the accompani- 
ment of an almost universal mockery. Mysteriously, as she 
proceeds, novices of the spiritual life appear and cluster around 
her. They come into existence, one knows not how, in the least 
favourable of atmospheres: but one and all are salted with the 
Teresian salt. They receive the infection of her abundant 
vitality: embrace eagerly and joyously the heroic life of the 
Reform. In the end, every city in Spain has within it Teresa’s 
' spiritual children: a whole order of contemplatives, as truly 
born of her as if they were indeed her sons and daughters in the 
flesh. 

Well might the Spiritual Alchemists say that the true “Lapis 
Philosophorum” is a ténging stone ; which imparts its goldness 
to the base metals brought within its sphere of influence. 

This reproductive power is one of the greatest marks of the 
theopathetic life ; the true “ mystic marriage” of the individual 


* Thomas of Celano, Legenda Secunda, cap. xii. 


518 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


soul with its Source. Those rare personalities in whom it is 
found are the medza through which that Triumphing Spiritual 
Life which is the essence of reality forces an entrance into the 
temporal order and begets children; heirs of the superabundant 
vitality of the transcendental universe. 

~“ But the Unitive Life is more than the sum total of its 
symptoms: more than the heroic and apostolic life of the 
“great active”: more than the divine motherhood of new 
“sons of the Absolute.’ These are only its outward signs, 
its expression in time and space. I have first laid stress 
upon that expression, because it is the side which all 
critics and some friends of the mystics persistently ignore. 
The contemplative’s power of living this intense and crea- 
tive life within the temporal order, however, is tightly bound 
up with that other life in which he attains to complete com- 
munion with the Absolute Order, and submits to the inflow of 
its supernal vitality. 

In discussing the contributions of the mystical experience to 
the theories of Absolutism and Vitalism,? we saw that the com- 
plete mystic consciousness, and therefore, of course, the complete 
mystic world, had a twofold character. It embraced, we per- 
ceived, a Reality which seems from the human standpoint at 
once static and dynamic, transcendent and immanent, eternal 
and temporal: accepted both the absolute World of Pure Being 
and the unresting World of Becoming as integral parts of its 
vision of Truth, demanding on its side a dual response. All 
through the Mystic Way we caught glimpses of the growth and 
exercise of this dual intuition of the Real. Now, the mature 
mystic, having come to his full stature, passed through the 
purifications of sense and of will and entered on his heritage, 
must and does take up as a part of that heritage not merely (a) 
a fruition of the Divine Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, his place 
within the Sempiternal Rose, nor (2) the creative activity of an 
agent of the Eternal Wisdom still immersed in the River of 
Life: but both together—the twofold destiny of the spiritual 
world. To use the old scholastic language, he is at once patient 
and agent: patient as regards God, agent as regards man. 

In a deep sense it may be said of him that he now partici- 
pates according to his measure in that divine-human life which 


* Supra, Pt. I. Cap. II. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 519 


mediates between man and the Eternal, and constitutes the 
“salvation of the world.” Therefore, though his outward heroic 
life of action, his divine fecundity, may seem to us the best 
evidence of his state, it is the inner knowledge of his mystical 
sonship, “the mysterious peace dwelling in activity,” says 
Ruysbroeck,! which is for him the guarantee of absolute life. 
He has many ways of describing this central fact ; this peculiar 
consciousness of his own transcendence, which coexists with, 
and depends on, a complete humility. Sometimes he says that 
whereas in the best moments of his natural life he was but the 
“faithful servant” of the eternal order, and in the illuminated 
way became its “secret friend,” he is now advanced to the 
final, most mysterious state of “hidden child.” “How great,” 
says Ruysbroeck, “is the difference between the secret friend 
and the hidden child! The first makes lively, impassioned, but 
measured ascents towards God. But the second presses on to 
lose his own life upon the summits, in that simplicity which 
knoweth not itself. ... It is then that, caught up above all 
things by the sublime ardours of a stripped and naked spirit, we 
feel within ourselves the certitude and the perfection of the 
children of God; and obtain the immediate contact of the 
Divine because we are immersed in the Nothingness.” 2 

Though the outer career of the great mystic, then, be one of - 
superhuman industry, a long fight with evil and adversity, his 
real and inner life dwells securely upon the heights; in the 
perfect fruition which he can only suggest to us by the para- © 
doxical symbols of ignorance and emptiness. He dominates — 
existence because he thus transcends it: is a son of God, a 
member of the eternal order, shares its substantial life. “Tran- — 
quillity according to His essence, activity according to His 
Nature: absolute repose, absolute fecundity ”: this, says 
Ruysbroeck again, is the twofold property of Godhead: and the | 
secret child of the Absolute participates in this dual character 
of Reality—“ for this dignity has man been made.” 3 

Those two aspects of truth which he has so clumsily classi- 
fied as static and dynamic, as Being and Becoming, now find 
their final reconciliation within his own nature: for that nature 


* “‘De Contemplatione” (Hello, p. 167). 
2 Of. cit., loc. ctt. 
3 [bid., p. 175. Vide supra, p. 42. 


520 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM — 


has become conscious in all its parts, has unified itself about its 
highest elements. That strange, tormenting vision of a perfect 
peace, a joyous self-loss, annihilation in some mighty Life that 
overpassed his own, which haunts man throughout the whole 
course of his history, and finds a more or less distorted expres- 
sion in all his creeds, a justification in all his ecstasies, is now 
traced to its source: and found to be the inevitable expression 
of an instinct by which he recognized, though he could not 
attain, the noblest part of his inheritance. This recognition of 
his has of necessity been imperfect and oblique. It has taken 
in many temperaments an exaggerated form, and has been 
further disguised by the symbolic language used to describe it. 
The tendency of Indian mysticism to regard the Unitive Life 
wholly in its passive aspect, as a total self-annihilation, a dis- 
appearance into the substance of the Godhead, results, I believe, 
from such a one-sided distortion of truth. The Oriental mystic 
“ presses on to lose his life upon the heights”; but he does not 
come back from the grave and bring to his fellow-men the life- 
giving news that he has transcended mortality in the interests 
of the race. The temperamental bias of Western mystics 
towards activity has saved them as a rule from such one-sided 
achievement as this; and hence it is in them that the Unitive 
Life, with its “dual character of activity and rest,” has assumed 
its richest and its noblest forms. 

Of all these Western mystics none has expressed more 
lucidly or more splendidly than Ruysbroeck the double nature 
of man’s reaction to Reality. It is the heart of his vision of 
truth. In all his books he returns to it again and again: 
speaking, as none familiar with his writings can doubt, the 
ardent, joyous, vital language of first-hand experience, not the 
_ platitudes of philosophy. He might say with Dante, his fore- 
runner into the Empyrean :— 


“‘La forma. universal di questo nodo 
credo ch’ io vidi, perché pit di largo 
dicendo questo, mi sento ch’ io godo.”? 


It is then from Ruysbroeck that I shall make my quota- 
tions : and if they be found somewhat long and difficult of com- 


* Par. xxxill. gt. ‘*I believe that I beheld the universal form of this knot : 
because in saying this I feel my joy increased.” 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 521 


prehension, their unique importance for the study of man’s 
spiritual abilities must be my excuse. 

First, his vision of God :— 

“The Divine Persons,” he says, “Who form one sole God, 
are in the fecundity of their nature ever active: and in the 
simplicity of their essence they form the Godhead and eternal 
blessedness. Thus God according to the Persons is Eternal 
Work: but according to the essence and Its perpetual stillness, 
He is Eternal Rest. Now love and fruition live between this 
activity and this rest. Love would work without ceasing: for 
its nature is eternal work with God. Fruition is ever at rest, 
for it dwells higher than the will and the longing /or the well- 
beloved, zz the well-beloved ; in the divine nescience and that 
simple love where the Father, together with the Son, enfolds 
His well-beloved in the abundant unity of His Spirit, above the 
fecundity of nature. And that same Father says to each soul 
in His infinite lovingkindness, ‘Thou art Mine and I am thine: 
I am thine and thou art Mine, for I have chosen thee from all 
eternity.’ ”? 

Next, the vision of the selfs destiny: “Our duty is to love 
God: our fruition is to endure God and be penetrated by His 
love. There is the same difference between love and fruition as 
there is between God and His Grace. When we unite our- 
selves to God by love, then we spiritualize ourselves: but when 
He Himself draws us in a flight of the spirit, and transforms 
us in His spirit, then, so to speak, we are fruition. And the 
spirit of God Himself pushes us out from Himself by His 
breath, in order that we may love, and may do good works ; 
and again He draws us to Himself, in order that we may 
repose in peace and in fruition. And this is Eternal Life ; even 
as our bodily life subsists in the indrawing and outgoing of our 
breath.” 2 

“ Understand,” he says again, “God comes to us incessantly, 
both with and without intermediary; and He demands of us both 
action and fruition, in sucha way that the action shall not hinder 
the fruition, nor the fruition the action, but they shall reinforce 
one another reciprocally. And this is why the interior man [2.e, 
the contemplative] possesses his life according to these two 
manners; that is to say, in rest and in work. And in each of 


* © De Septem Gradibus Amoris,” cap. xiv. ? Lbid., loc. cit. 


522 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


them he is wholly and undividedly ; for he dwells altogether in 
God in virtue of his restful fruition and altogether in himself in 
virtue of his active love. And God, in His communications, 
incessantly compels him to renew both this rest and this work. 
And because the soul is just, it desires to pay at every instant 
that which God demands of it; and this is why each time it is 
irradiated of Him, the soul is introverted in a manner that is 
both active and fruitive, and thus that man is strengthened in 
all virtues and ever more profoundly immersed in fruitive love. 
. . » He is active in all loving work, for he sees his rest. He 
is a pilgrim, for he sees his country. For love’s sake he strives 
for victory, for he sees his crown. Consolation, peace, joy, 
beauty and riches, all that can give delight, all this is shown to 
the mind illuminated in God, in spiritual similitudes and without 
measure. And through this vision, in the contact of God, love 
continues active. For such a just man has built up in his own 
soul, in rest and in work, a veritable life which shall endure 
for ever; but which shall be transformed after this present 
life to a state still more sublime. Thus this man is just, and 
he goes zowards God by inward love, in eternal work, and he 
goes zw God by his fruitive inclination in eternal rest. And 
he dwells in God ; and yet he goes out towards created things, 
in a spirit of love towards all things, in the virtues and in 
works of righteousness. And this ts the supreme summit of 
the inner life.” * 

Compare this description with the careers of the theopathetic 
mystics; in whom, indeed, “ action has not injured fruition, nor 
fruition action,” who have, by some secret adjustment—some 
strange magic, as it seems to other men—contrived to “ possess 
their lives in rest and in work” without detriment to inward 
joy or outward industry. 

Bear in mind as you read these words—Ruysbroeck’s last 
supreme effort to tell the true relation between man’s free spirit 
and his God—the great public ministry of St. Catherine of 
Siena, which ranged from the tending of the plague-stricken to 
the reforming of the Papacy; and was accompanied by the 
inward fruitive consciousness of the companionship of Christ. 
Remember the humbler but not less beautiful and significant 
achievement of her Genoese namesake: the strenuous lives of 


* Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles,” 1. ii. cap. Ixxiii. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 523 


St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius, St. Teresa, outwardly 
cumbered with much serving, observant of an infinitude of 
tiresome details, composing rules, setting up foundations, neg- 
lecting no aspect of their business which could conduce to its 
practical success, yet “altogether dwelling in God in restful 
fruition.” Are not all these supreme examples of the state in 
which the self, at last fully conscious, knowing Reality because 
she is wholly real, pays her debt? Unable torest entirely either 
in work or in fruition, she seizes on this twofold expression of 
the superabundant life by which she is possessed: and, on the 
double wings of eagerness and effort, takes flight towards her 
Home. 

In dwelling, as we have done, on the ways in which the 
great mystic makes actual to himself the circumstances of the 
Unitive State, we must not forget that this state is, in essence, 
a fulfilment of love; the attainment of a “heart’s desire.” By 
this attainment, this lifting of the self to free union with the 
Real—as by the earthly marriage which dimly prefigures it—a 
new life is entered upon, new powers, new responsibilities are 
conferred. But this is not all. The. three prime activities of 
the normal self, feeling, intellect, and will, though they seem to 
be fused, are really carried up to a higher term. They are 
unified, it is true, but still present in their integrity ; and each 
demands and receives full satisfaction in the attainment of this 
final “honour for which man has been made.” The intellect is 
immersed in that mighty vision of truth, known now not as a 
vision but as a home; where St. Paul saw things which might 
not be uttered, St. Teresa found the “ perpetual companionship 
of the Blessed Trinity,’ and Dante, caught to its heart for one 
brief moment, his mind smitten by the blinding flash of the 
Uncreated Light, knew that he had resolved Reality’s last para- 
dox: the unity of “cerchio” and “zmago”—the infinite and 
personal aspects of God.t_ The enhanced will, made over to 
the interests of the Transcendent, receives new worlds to 
conquer, new strength to match its exalted destiny. But the 
heart too here enters on a new order, begins to live upon. high 
levels of joy. “This soul, says Love, swims in the sea of joy: 
that is, in the sea of delight, the stream of divine influences.” 2 


Par. xxxili. 137. 
* « The Mirror of Simple Souls,” f. 161. 


524 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


“ Amans volat, currit et laetatur: liber est et non tenetur,”’ * 
said A Kempis: classic words, which put before us once and 
for ever the inward joyousness and liberty of the saints. 
They “fly, run and rejoice”-—those great, laborious souls, 
often spent with amazing mortifications, vowed to hard and — 
never-ending tasks. They are “free, and nothing can hold 
them,” though they seem to the world fenced in by absurd 
renunciations and restrictions, deprived of that cheap licence 
which it knows as liberty. 

That fruition of joy of which Ruysbroeck speaks in majestic 
phrases, describes as constituting the interior life of mystic 
souls immersed in the Absolute—the translation of the Beatific 
Vision into the terms of a supernal feeling-state—is o*ten 
realized in the secret experience of those same mystics, as 
the perennial possession of a childlike gaiety, an inextinguish- 
able gladness of heart. The transfigured souls move to the 
measures of a “love dance” which persists in mirth without 
comparison, through every outward hardship and tribulation, — 
They enjoy the high spirits peculiar to high spirituality: and 
shock the world by a delicate playfulness, instead of exhibiting 
the morose resignation which it feels to be proper to the 
“spiritual life.” Thus St. Catherine of Siena, though constantly 
suffering, “was always jocund and of a happy spirit.” When 
prostrate with illness she overflowed with gaiety and gladness, 
and “was full of laughter in the Lord, exultant and rejoicing.” 2 | 

Moreover, the most clear-sighted amongst the mystics 
declare such joy to be an implicit of Reality. Thus Dante, 
initiated into Paradise, sees the whole Universe laugh with 
delight as it glorifies God:3 and the awful countenance of 
Perfect Love adorned with smiles. Thus the souls of the 
great theologians dance to music and laughter in the Heaven 
of the Sun;5 the loving seraphs, in their ecstatic joy, whirl 
about the Being of God.6 “O luce eterna che ... amt ed arridz,” 
exclaims the pilgrim, as the Divine Essence is at last revealed 
to him,? and he perceives love and joy as the final attributes 


 ** De Imitatione Christi,” 1. iii. cap. v. 

? Contestatio Fr. Thomae Caffarina, Processus, col. 1258 (E. Gardner, ‘** St.) 
Catherine of Siena,’’ p. 48). 

3 Par. xxvii. 4. 4 Tbid., xx. 13. 5 Jbid., x. 76, 118. 

© Jbid., xxviii. 100. 7 Lbid., xxxiii. 124-26. 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 525 


of the Triune God. Thus Beatrice with “ szoz occht ridents”— 
so different from the world’s idea of a suitable demeanour for 
the soul’s supreme instructress—laughs as she mounts with 
him the ladder to the stars. So, if the deified soul has 
indeed run ahead of humanity and “according to his fruition 
dwells in heaven,” he too, like Francis, will run, rejoice and 
make merry: join the eager dance of the Universe about 
the One. “If,’ say Patmore, “we may credit certain hints | 
contained in the lives of the saints, love raises the spirit 
above the sphere of reverence and worship into one of laughter 
and dalliance; a sphere in which the soul says :— 


¢¢Shall I, a gnat which dances in Thy ray, 
Dare to be reverent?’ ’’? 


Richard Rolle has expressed this exultant “spirit of 
dalliance” with peculiar insight and delicacy. ‘“ Among the 
delights which he tastes in so sweet love burning,” he says 
of the true lover who “in the bond of lovers’ wills stably is 
confirmed,” “a heavenly privity inshed he feels, that no man 
can know but he that has received it, and in himself buries the 
electuary: that anoints and makes happy all joyful lovers in 
Jesu ; so that they cease not to hie in heavenly seats to sit, 
joy of their Maker endlessly to use. Hereto truly they yearn 
in heavenly sights abiding; and inwardly set afire, all their 
inward parts are glad with pleasant shining in light. And 
themselves they feel gladdened with merriest love, and in joyful 
song wonderfully melted.... But this grace generally and 
to all is not given, but to the holiest of holy souls is taught; 
in whom the excellence of love shines, and songs of lovely - 
loving, Christ inspiring, commonly burst up, and now made as 
it were a pipe of life, in sight of God more goodly than can 
be said, joying sounds. The which (soul) the mystery of love 
knowing, with great cry to its Love ascends, in wit sharpest, 
and in knowledge and in feeling subtle; not spread in things 
of this world but into God all gathered and set, that in clean- 
ness of conscience and shining of soul to Him it may serve 
Whom it has purposed to love, and itself to Him to give. 


4 Coventry Patmore, ‘‘ The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘‘ Aurea Dicta,” xxxix. 


526 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Surely the clearer the love of the lover is, the nearer to him ~ 
and the more present God is. And thereby more clearly in~ 
God he joys, and of the sweet Goodness the more he feels, that © 
to lovers is wont Itself to inshed, and to mirth without com- 


parison the hearts of the meek to turn.” ! 


x 
" 


4 
m 


’ 
‘ 
3 

a 


‘ 


The last state of burning love, said Rolle, than which he” 
could conceive no closer reaction to Reality, was the state of 


Sweetness and Song: the welling up of glad music in the 


simple soul, man’s natural expression of a joy which overpasses — 
the descriptive powers of our untuneful speech. In the gay — 
rhythms of that primordial art he may say something of the 


secret which the more decorous periods of religion and phil- 
osophy will never let him tell: something, too, which in its 


a 


very childishness, its freedom from the taint of solemnity and — 
self-importance, expresses the quality of that inward life, that” 
perpetual youth, which the “secret child” of the Transcendent 
Order enjoys. “As it were a pipe of life” in the sight of God~ 


he “joying sounds.” The music of the spheres is all about 
him: he is a part of the great melody of the Divine. “Sweetest 
forsooth,” says Rolle again, “is the rest which the spirit takes 


whilst sweet goodly sound comes down in which it is delighted: 
and in most sweet song and playful the mind is ravished, — 


to sing likings of love everlasting.” 2 


When we come to look at the lives of the mystics, we find — 


it literally true that such “songs of lovely loving commonly 


b 


burst up” whenever we can catch them unawares; see behind — 
the formidable and heroic activities of reformer, teacher, or | 
leader of men, the vze zutzme which is lived at the hearth of — 
Love. “What are the servants of the Lord but His minstrels?” 
said St. Francis; who saw nothing inconsistent between the ~ 
Celestial Melodies and the Stigmata of Christ. Moreover the” 
songs of such troubadours, as the hermit of Hampole learned : 
in his wilderness, are not only sweet but playful. Dwelling ~ 
always in a light of which we hardly dare to think, save in the © 


extreme terms of reverence and awe, they are not afraid with ~ 


any amazement: they are at home. 
The whole life of St. Francis of Assisi, that spirit trans- 


* Richard Rolle, ‘‘The Fire of Love,” bk. ii. cap. vii. 
2 Op. cit., bk. i. cap. xii. 
3 “* Speculum Perfectionis,” cap. c. (Steele’s translation). 


4 


ee oe ee 


THE UNITIVE LIFE | 527 


figured in God, who “ loved above all other birds a certain little 
bird which is called the lark,’! was one long march to music 
through the world. To sing seemed to him a primary spiritual 
function: he taught his friars in their preaching to urge all 
men to this.2 It appeared to him appropriate and just to 
use the love language of the troubadours in praise of the more 
perfect Love which had marked him as Its own. “ Drunken 
with the love and compassion of Christ, blessed Francis ona 
time did things such as these. For the most sweet melody 
of spirit boiling up within him, frequently broke out in French 
speech, and the veins of murmuring which he heard secretly 
with his ears broke forth into French-like rejoicing. And 
sometimes he picked up a branch from the earth, and laying 
it on his left arm, he drew in his right hand another stick 
like a bow over it, as if on a viol or other instrument, and, 
making fitting gestures, sang with it in French unto the Lord 
Jesus Christ.”3 

Many a time has the romantic quality of the Unitive Life— 
its gaiety, freedom, assurance, and joy—broken out in “ French- 
like rejoicings”; which have a terribly frivolous sound for 
worldly ears, and seem the more preposterous as coming from 
people whose outward circumstances are of the most uncomfort- 
able kind. St. John of the Cross wrote love songs to his Love. 
St. Rose of Lima sang duets with the birds. St. Teresa, in the 
austere and poverty-stricken seclusion of her first foundation, 
did not disdain to make rustic hymns and carols for her 
daughters’ use in the dialect of Old Castile. Like St. Francis, 
she had a horror of solemnity. It was only fit for hypocrites, 
thought these rejuvenators of the Church. The hard life of 
prayer and penance on Mount Carmel was undertaken in a 
joyous spirit to the sound of many songs. Its great Reformer 
was quick to snub the too-spiritual sister who “thought it 
better to contemplate than to sing”: and was herself heard, as 
she swept the convent corridor, to sing a little ditty about the 
most exalted of her own mystical experiences: that ineffable 
transverberation, in which the fiery arrow of the seraph pierced 
her heart.4 


+ “ Speculum,”’? cap. cxiii. 2 Jbid., cap. c. 
8 [bid., cap. xciii., also Thomas of Celano, Vita Secunda, cap. xc. 
4 Cf. G. Cunninghame Graham, ‘‘ Santa Teresa,” vol. i. pp. 180, 300, 304. 


528 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


But the most lovely and real, most human and most near 
to us, of all these descriptions of the celestial exhilaration 
which mystic surrender brings in its train, is the artless, unin- 
tentional self-revelation of St. Catherine of Genoa, whose inner 
and outer lives in their balanced wholeness provide us with one 
of our best standards by which to judge the right proportions of 
the Mystic Way. Here the whole essence of the Unitive Life is 
' summed up and presented to us by one who lived it upon heroic 
levels: and who was, in fruition and activity, in rest and in 
work, not only a great active and a great ecstatic, but one of 
the deepest gazers into the secrets of Eternal Love which the 
history of Christian mysticism contains. Yet perhaps there is — 
no passage in the works of these same mystics which comes to 
so unexpected, so startling a conclusion as this; in which St. — 
Catherine, with a fearless simplicity, shows to her fellow-men 
the nature of the path that she has trodden and the place that 
she has reached. 

“When,” she says, in one of her reported dialogues—and 
though the tone be impersonal it is clearly personal experience 
which speaks—“ the lovingkindness of God calls a soul from the 
world, He finds it full of vices and sins; and first He gives it an 
instinct for virtue, and then urges it to perfection, and then by 
infused grace leads it to true self-naughting, and at last to true 
transformation. And this noteworthy order serves God to lead 
the soul along the Way: but when the soul is naughted and 
transformed, then of herself she neither works nor speaks nor 
wills, nor feels nor hears nor understands, neither has she of © 
herself the feeling of outward or inward, where she may move. 
And in all things it is God Who rules and guides her without 
the mediation of any creature. And the state of this soul 
is then a feeling of such utter peace and tranquillity that it 
seems to her that her heart, and her bodily being, and all both — 
within and without is immersed in an ocean of utmost peace ; 
from whence she shall never come forth for anything that can — 
befall her in this life. And she stays immovable imper- 
turbable, impassible. So much so, that it seems to her in 
her human and her spiritual nature, both within and without, 
she can feel no other thing than sweetest peace. And she 
is so full of peace that though she press her flesh, her nerves, 
her bones, no other thing comes forth from them than peace — 


THE UNITIVE LIFE 529 


Then says she all day for joy such rhymes as these, making 
them according to her manner :— 


*¢¢Vuoi tu che tu mostr’io 
Presto che cosa e Dio? 
Pace non trova chi da lui si partid.’” ? 


“Then says she all day for joy such rhymes as these ”— 
nursery rhymes, one might almost call them: so infantile, so 
naive is their rhythm. Who would have suspected this to be 
the secret manner of communion between the exalted soul 
of Catherine and her Love? How many of those who actually 
saw that great and able woman tirelessly labouring in the 
administration of her hospital—who heard that profound and 
instinctive Christian Platonist instructing her disciples, and 
declaring the law of universal and heroic love—how many of 
these divined that “questa santa benedetta” who seemed to 
them already something more than earthly, a matter of solemn 
congratulation and reverential approach, went about her work 
with a heart engaged in no lofty speculations on Eternity; no 
outpourings of mystic passion for the Absolute, but “ saying 
all day for joy,” in a spirit of childlike happiness, gay and 
foolish little songs about her Love? 

Standing at the highest point of the mystic ladder which 
can be reached by human spirits in this world of time and 
space, looking back upon the course of that slow interior 
alchemy, that “ noteworthy order ” of organic transformation, by 
which her selfhood had been purged of imperfection, raised to 
higher levels, compelled at last to surrender itself to the all- 
embracing, all-demanding life of the Real; this is St. Catherine’s 
deliberate judgment on the relative and absolute aspects of the 
mystic life. The “ noteworthy order” which we have patiently 

followed, the psychic growth and rearrangement of character 
* ** Dost thou wish that I should show 
All God's Being thou mayst know? 


Peace is not found of those who do not with Him go.” 
(Vita e Dottrina, cap. xviii.) 


Here, in spite of the many revisions to which the Vita has been subjected, I can- 
not but see an authentic report of St. Catherine’s inner mind ; highly characteristic 
of the personality which ‘‘ came joyous and rosy-faced”’ from its ecstatic encounters 
with Love. The very unexpectedness of its conclusion, so unlike the expressions 
_supposed to be proper to the saints, is a guarantee of its authenticity. On the text of 
the Vita see Von Hiigel, ‘‘ The Mystical Element of Religion,’’ vol. i., Appendix. 

MM é 


530 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


the visions and ecstasies, the joyous illumination and bitter pain 
—these but “served to lead the soul along the way.” In the 
mighty transvaluation of values which takes place when that way 
has at last been trod, these “abnormal events” sink to insig- 
nificance. For us, looking out wistfully along the pathway to 
reality, they stand out, it is true, as supreme landmarks, by which 
we may trace the homeward course of pilgrim man. The 
- importance of their study cannot be overrated for those who 
would study the way to that world from this. But the mystic, — 
safe in that silence where lovers lose themselves, “his cheek on 
Him Who for his coming came,” remembers them no more. In 
the midst of his active work, his incessant spiritual creation, joy 
and peace enfold him. He needs no stretched and sharpened 
intuition now: for he dwells in that “ most perfect form of con- 
templation” which “consists in simple and perceived contact 
of the substance of the soul with that of the divine.” 1 

The wheel of life has made its circle. Here, at the last point 
of its revolution, the extremes of sublimity and simplicity are 
seen to meet. It has swept the soul of the mystic through 
periods of alternate stress and glory; tending ever to greater 
transcendence, greater freedom, closer contact with “the 
Supplier of true life.” He emerges from that long and 
wondrous journey to find himself, in rest and in work, a little 
child upon the bosom of the Father. In that most dear relation 
all feeling, will, and thought attain their end. Here all the 
teasing complications of our separated selfhood are transcended. 
Hence the eager striving, the sharp vision, are not wanted any 
more. In that mysterious death of selfhood on the summits 
which is the medium of Eternal Life, heights meet the deeps: 
supreme achievement and complete humility are one. 

In a last brief vision, a glimpse as overpowering to our 
common minds as Dante’s final intuition of reality to his 
exalted and courageous soul, we see the triumphing spirit, sent 
out before us, the best that earth can offer, stoop and strip 
herself of the insignia of wisdom and power. Achieving the 
highest, she takes the lowest place. Initiated into the atmo- 
sphere of Eternity, united with the Absolute, possessed at last 
of the fullness of Its life, the soul, self-naughted, becomes as a 
little child: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. 


* Coventry Patmore, ‘‘ The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,” ‘* Magna Moralia,” xv. 


CONCLUSION 


E have traced, as well as our limitations allow us, the 
V V Mystic Way from its beginning to its end. We have 
seen the ever-changing, ever-growing human spirit 
emerging from the cave of illusion, enter into consciousness of 
the transcendental world: the “pilgrim set towards Jerusalem” 
pass through its gates and attain his home in the bosom of - 
Reality. For him, as we have learned from his words and 
actions, this journey and this End are all: their overwhelming - 
importance and significance swallow up, of necessity, every 
other aspect of life. Now, at the end of our inquiry, we are 
face to face with the question—What do these things mean for 
us; for ordinary unmystical men? What are their links with 
that concrete world of appearance in which we are held fast: 
with that mysterious, ever-changing life which we are forced to 
lead? What do these great and strange adventures of the 
spirit tell us as to the goal of that lesser adventure of life on 
which we are set: as to our significance, our chances of freedom, 
our relation with the Absolute? Do they merely represent the 
eccentric performances of a rare psychic type? Are the match- 
less declarations of the contemplatives only the fruits of 
unbridled imaginative genius, as unrelated to reality as music 
to the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange? Or are they the 
supreme manifestation of a power which is inherent in our 
life: reports of observations made upon an actual plane of 
being, which transcends and dominates our normal world of 
sense? The question is vital: for unless the history of the 
mystics can touch and light up some part of this normal 
experience, take its place in the general history of man, con- 
tribute something towards our understanding of his nature and 
destiny, its interest for us can never be more than remote, 
academic, and unreal. 


Far from being academic or unreal, that history, I think, is 
531 


532 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 

vital for the deeper understanding of the history of humanity. 
It shows us, upon high levels, the psychological process to which 
every self which desires to rise to the perception of Reality 
must submit: the formula under which man’s spiritual con- 
sciousness, be it strong or weak, must necessarily unfold. In 


the great mystics we see the highest and widest development 
of that consciousness to which the human race has yet attained. 


_. We see its growth exhibited to us on a grand scale, perceptible 
_ of all men: the stages of its slow transcendence of the sense- 


ee eal 


world marked by episodes of splendour and of terror which are 
hard for common men to accept or understand as a part of the 
organic process of life. But the germ of that same transcen- 
dent life, the spring of the amazing energy which enables the 
great mystic to rise to freedom and dominate his world, is latent 
in all of us; an integral part of our humanity. Where the 
mystic has a genius for the Absolute, we have each a little 
buried talent, some greater, some less; and the growth of this 
talent, this spark of the soul, once we permit its emergence, will 
conform in little, and according to its measure, to those laws of 
organic growth, those inexorable conditions of transcendence 
which we found to govern the Mystic Way. 

Every person, then, who awakens to consciousness of a 
Reality which transcends the normal world of sense—however 
small, weak, imperfect that consciousness may be—is put of 
necessity upon a road which follows at low levels the path 
which the mystic treads at high levels. The success with which 
he follows this way to freedom and full life will depend on the 
intensity of his_love and will; his capacity for self-discipline, 
his steadfastness and courage.) It will depend on the generosity 
and completeness of his outgoing passion for absolute beauty, 
absolute goodness, or absolute truth.) But if he move at all, 
he will move through a series of states which are, in their own 
small way, strictly analogous to those experienced by the 
greatest contemplative on his journey towards that union with 
God which is the term of the spirit’s ascent towards its home. 

As the embryo of physical man, be he saint or savage, 
passes through the same stages of initial growth, so too with 
spiritual man. When the “new birth” takes place in him, 
the new life-process of his deeper self begins, the normal indi- 
vidual, no less than the mystic, will know that spiral ascent 


CONCLUSION 533 


towards higher levels, those violent oscillations of consciousness 
between light and darkness, those odd mental distfrbances, 
abrupt invasions from the subliminal region, and disconcerting 
glimpses of truth, which accompany the growth of the transcen- 
dental powers; though he may well interpret them in other than . 
the mystic sense. He too will be impelled to drastic self- 
discipline, to a deliberate purging of his eyes that he may 
see: and, receiving a new vision of the world, will be spurred 
by it to a total self-dedication, an active surrender of his whole 
being, to that aspect of the Infinite which he has perceived. 
He too will endure in little the psychic upheavals of the spiritual 
adolescence: will be forced to those sacrifices which every form 
of genius demands. He will know according to his measure 
the dreadful moments of lucid self-knowledge, the counter- 
balancing ecstasy of an intuition of the Real. More and more, 
as we study and collate all the available evidence, this fact— 
this law—is borne in on us: that the movement of human 
consciousness, when it obeys its innate tendency to transcen- 
dence, is always the same. There is only one road from 
Appearance to. Reality. “Men pass on, but the States are 
permanent for ever.” 

I do not care whether the consciousness be that of artist 
Or musician, striving to catch and fix some aspect of the 
heavenly light or music, and denying all other aspects of the 
world in order to devote themselves to this: or of the humble ° 
servant of Science, purging his intellect that he may look upon 
her secrets with innocence of eye: whether the higher reality 
be perceived in the terms of religion, beauty, suffering; of 
human love, of goodness, or of truth. However widely these , 
forms of transcendence may seem to differ, the mystic experi- - 
ence is the key to them all. All in their different ways are 
exhibitions here and now of the Eternal; extensions of man’s 
consciousness which involve calls to heroic endeavour, incentives 
to the remaking of character about new and higher centres of 
life: Through each, man may rise to freedom and take his 
place in the great movement of the universe’: may “ understand 
by dancing that which is done.” Each brings the self who 
receives its revelation in good faith, does not check it by self- 
regarding limitations, to a humble acceptance of the universal 
law of knowledge: the law that “we behold that which we 


534 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


are”; and hence that “only the Real can know Reality.” 
Awakening, Discipline, Enlightenment, Self-surrender, and 
Union, are the essential processes of life’s response to this 
fundamental fact: the conditions of our attainment of Being, 
the necessary formule under which alone our consciousness of 
any of these fringes of Eternity—any of these aspects of the 
Transcendent—can unfold, develop, attain to freedom and full life. 

We are, then, one and all the kindred of the mystics ; and it 
is by dwelling upon this kinship, by interpreting—so far as we 
may—their great declarations in the light of our own little 
experience, that we shall learn to understand them _ best. 
Strange and far away though they seem, they are not cut off 
from us by some impassable abyss. They belong tous. They 
are our brethren; the giants, the heroes of our race. As the 
achievement of genius belongs not to itself only, but also to the 
society that brought it forth; as theology declares that the 
merits of the saints avail for all; so, because of the solidarity 
of the human family, the supernal accomplishment of the 
mystics is ours also. Their attainment is the earnest-money 
of our eternal life. 

To be a mystic is simply to participate here and now in that 
real and. eternal life’; in the fullest, deepest sense which is 
possible to man.” It is to share, as a free and conscious agent— 
_ not a servant, but as a son—in the joyous travail of the Uni- 
verse : its mighty onward sweep through pain and glory towards 
its home in God. {This gift of “ sonship,” this power of free co- 
operation in the world- -process, is man’s greatest honour.) The 
ordered sequence of states, the organic development, “whereby 
his consciousness is detached from illusion and rises to the 
mystic freedom which conditions, instead of being conditioned 
by, its normal world, is the way he must tread if that sonship is 
to be attained. Only by this deliberate fostering of his deeper 
self, this transmutation of the elements of character, can he reach 
those levels of consciousness upon which he hears, and responds 
to, the measure “ whereto the worlds keep time” on their great 
pilgrimage towards the Father’s heart. The mystic act of union, 
that joyous loss of the transfigured self in God, which is the 
crown of man’s conscious ascent towards the Absolute, is the 
contribution of the individual to this, the destiny of the 
Cosmos, 


—@ 1 


CONCLUSION 535 


The mystic knows that destiny. It is laid bare to his lucid 
vision, as plain to him as our puzzling world of form and 
colour is to normal sight. He is the “hidden child” of the 
eternal order, an initiate of the secret plan. Hence, whilst “all 
creation groaneth and travaileth,” slowly moving under the spur 
of blind desire towards that consummation in which alone it can 
have rest, he runs eagerly along the pathway to reality. He is 
the pioneer of Life on its age-long voyage to the One: and 
shows us, in his attainment, the meaning and value of that life. 

This meaning, this secret plan of Creation, flames out, had 
we eyes to see, from every department of existence. Its exult- 
ant declarations come to us in all great music; its wild magic 
is the life of all romance. Its law—-the law of love—is the sub- 
stance of the beautiful, the energizing cause of the heroic. It 
lights the altar of every creed. It runs like ichor in the arteries 
of the universe. All man’s dreams and diagrams concerning 
a transcendent Perfection near him yet intangible, a tran- 
scendent vitality to which he can attain—whether he call these 
objects of desire, God, grace, being, spirit, beauty, “ pure idea”— 
are but translations of his deeper self’s intuition of its destiny ; 
clumsy fragmentary hints at the all-inclusive, living Absolute 
which that deeper self knows to be real. This supernal Thing, 
the adorable Substance of all that Is—the synthesis of Wisdom, 
Power, and Love—and man’s apprehension of it, his slow 
remaking in its interests, his union with it at last; this is the 
theme of mysticism. That twofold extension of consciousness 
which allows him communion with its transcendent and im- 
manent aspects is, in all its gradual processes, the Mystic Way. 
It is also the crown of human evolution; the fulfilment of life, 
the liberation of personality from the world of appearance, its 
entrance into the free, creative life of the Real. 

Further, Christians may well remark that the psychology of 
Christ, as presented to us in the Gospels, is of a piece with that 
of the mystics. In its pains and splendours, its dual character 
of action and fruition, it reflects their experience upon the 
supernal plane of more abundant life. Thanks to this fact, for 
them the Ladder of Contemplation—that ladder which 
mediaeval thought counted as an instrument of the Passion, 
discerning it as essential to the true salvation of man—stretches 
without a break from earth to the Empyrean. It leans against 


536 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


the Cross; it leads to the Secret Rose. By it the ministers of 
Goodness, Truth, and Beauty go up and down between the 
transcendent and the apparent world. Seen, then, from whatever 
standpoint we may choose to adopt—whether of psychology, 
philosophy, or religion—the adventure of the great mystics inti- 
mately concerns us. It is a master-key to man’s puzzle: by its 
help hemay explain much in his mental make-up, in his religious 
constructions, in his experience of life. In all these departments 
he perceives himself to be climbing slowly and clumsily upward 
toward some attainment yet unseen. The mystics, expert 
mountaineers, go before him: and show him, if he cares to 
learn, the way to freedom, to reality, to peace. He cannot rise in 
this, his earthly existence, to the awful and solitary peak, veiled 
in the Cloud of Unknowing, where they meet that “death of the 
summit,” which is declared by them to be the gate of Perfect 
Life: but if he choose to profit by their explorations, he may 
find his level, his place within the Eternal Order. He may 
rise to freedom, live the “independent spiritual life,” 
Consider once more the Mystic Way as we have traced it 
from its beginning. To what does it tend if not to this? 
It began by the awakening within the self of a new and 
“enfibryonic consciousness: a consciousness of divine reality, as 
opposed to the illusory sense-world in which she was immersed. 
Humbled, awed by the august possibilities then revealed to her, 
that self retreated into the “cell of self-knowledge” and there 
laboured to adjust herself to the Eternal Order which she had 
perceived, stripped herself of all that opposed it, disciplined her 
energies, purified the organs of sense. Remade in accordance 
with her intuitions of reality, the “eternal hearing and seeing 
were revealed in her.” She opened her eyes upon a world still 
natural, but no longer illusory ; since it was perceived to be 
illuminated by the Uncreated Light. She knew then the 
beauty, the majesty, the divinity of the living World of 
Becoming which holds in its meshes every living thing. She 
had transcended the narrow rhythm by which common men 
perceive but one of its many aspects, escaped the machine- 
made universe presented by the cinematograph of sense, and 
participated in the “great life of the All.” Reality came forth 
to her, since her eyes were cleansed to see It, not from some 
strange far-off and spiritual country, but gently, from the very 


a 


CONCLUSION 537 


heart of things. Thus lifted to a new level, she began again her 
ceaseless work of growth: and because by the cleansing of the 
senses she had learned to see the reality which is shadowed by 
the sense-world, she now, by the cleansing of her will, sought 
to draw nearer to that Eternal Will, that Being which life, the 
World.of Becoming, manifests and serves. Thus, by the com- 
plete surrender of her selfhood in its wholeness, by the perfect- 
ing of her love, she slid from Becoming to Being, and found her 
true life hidden in God. 

Yet the course of this transcendence, this amazing inward 
journey, was closely linked, first and last, with the processes of 
human life. It sprang from that life,as man springs from the 
sod. We were even able to describe it under those symbolic 
formulze which we are accustomed to call the “laws” of the 
natural world. By an extension of these formule, their logical 
application, we discovered a path which led us without a break 
from the sensible to the supra-sensible; from apparent to 
absolute life. There is nothing unnatural about the Absolute 
of the mystics: He sets the rhythm of His own universe, and 
conforms to the harmonies which He has made. We, deliber- 
ately seeking for that which we suppose to be spiritual, too 
often overlook that which alone is Real. The true mysteries of | 
life accomplish themselves so softly, with so easy and assured a 
grace, so frank an acceptance of our breeding, striving, dying, 
and unresting world, that the unimaginative natural man—all 
agog for the marvellous—is hardly startled by their daily and 
radiant revelation of infinite wisdom and love. Yet this revela- 
tion presses incessantly upon us. Only the hard crust of sur- 
face-consciousness conceals it from our normal sight. In some 
least expected moment, the common activities of life in pro- 
gress, that Reality in Whom the mystics dwell slips through 
our closed doors, and suddenly we see It at our side. 

It was said of the disciples at Emmaus, “ Mensam igitur 
ponunt, panes cibosque offerunt, et Deum, quem in Scripturae 
sacrae expositione non cognoverant, in panis_ fractione 
cognoscunt.” So too for us the Transcendent Life for which 
we crave is revealed, and our living within it, not on some 
remote and arid plane of being, in the cunning explanations of 
philosophy ; but in the normal acts of our diurnal experience 
suddenly made significant for us. Not in the backwaters of 


538 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


existence, not amongst subtle arguments and occult doctrines, 
but in all those places where the direct and simple life of earth 
goes on. It is found in the soul of man so long as that soul is 
alive and growing: it is not found in any sterile place. | 

This fact of experience is our link with the mystics, our 
guarantee of the truthfulness of their statements, the supreme 
importance of their adventure, their closer contact with Reality. 
The mystics on their part are our guarantee of the end towards 
which the Immanent Love, the hidden steersman which dwells 
in our midst, is moving: our “lovely forerunners” on the path 
towards the Real. They come back to us from an encounter 
with life’s most august secret, as Mary came running from the 
tomb; filled with amazing tidings which they can hardly tell. 
We, longing for some assurance, and seeing their radiant faces, 
urge them to pass on their revelation if they can. It is the old 
demand of the dim-sighted and incredulous :— 


‘Dic nobis Maria 
Quid vidisti in via?’ 


But they cannot say: can only report fragments of the symbolic 
vision :— 
‘* Angelicos testes, sudarium, et vestes”— 


not the inner content, the final divine certainty. We must 
ourselves follow in their footsteps if we would have that. 
Like the story of the Cross, so too the story of man’s 
spirit ends in a garden: in a place of birth and fruitfulness, 
of beautiful and natural things. Divine Fecundity is its secret: 
"existence, not for its own sake, but for the sake of a more 
abundant life. It ends with the coming forth of divine 
humanity, never again to leave us: living in us and with 
us, a pilgrim, a worker, a guest at our table, a sharer at all 
hazards in life. The mystics witness to this story: waking 
very early they have run on before us, urged by the greatness 
of their love. We, incapable as yet of this sublime encounter, 
looking in their magic mirror, listening to their stammered 
tidings, may see far off the consummation of the race. 
According to the measure of their strength and of their 
passion, these, the true lovers of the Absolute, have conformed 


CONCLUSION 539 


here and now to the utmost tests of divine sonship, the final 
demands of life. They have not shrunk from the sufferings 
of the cross. They have faced the darkness of the tomb. 
Beauty and agony alike have called them: alike have awakened 
a heroic response. For them the winter is over: the time 
of the singing of birds is come. From the deeps of the dewy 
garden, Life—new, unquenchable, and ever lovely—comes to 
meet them with the dawn. 


Et boc intellegere, quis bominum Dabit homini ? 
Muis angelus angelo ? 
Muis angeius homini ? 
@ te petatur, 
Qn te quaeratur, 
Ap te pulsetur, 
@ic, sic accipietur, sic inbenietur, sic aperietur, 


5 


Noy Ne) 
ae hy 
i 


ak Ge 
ba ata HMA Ah Mi 


BA Se oP NS RPO 
Rhigh ALU ene 
MN at sont ida 

A Art AD ER 


eC VE 


ANU AY ue Se A) 


te 
eR 


Ne te he ith i) ’ AW) Ui) Mey 
\ Hina) u vey Waa ves \ ye EE eh ae ; 1: 
Hii ithig NERY aRAerany epi} Ne FANT VRS , 
nt Ny wea aa 
. j A 


Py ee 


Dw ie 


Pola 





APPENDIX 


A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EUROPEAN MYSTICISM FROM 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE 
DEATH OF BLAKE 


F we try to represent the course of Mysticism in Europe during the 
Christian period by the common device of a chronological curve, 
showing, by its rises and falls as it passes across the centuries, the 

absence or preponderance in any given epoch of mystics and mystical 
thought; we shall find that the great periods of mystical activity 
correspond with a curious exactness with the great periods of artistic, 
material, and intellectual civilization. Rather, they come immediately 
after, and seem to complete such periods: those stupendous outbursts 
of vitality in which man makes fresh conquests over his universe, 
apparently producing as their last stage a type of heroic character which 
extends these victories to the spiritual sphere. When science, politics, 
literature, and the arts—the domination of nature and the ordering of 
life—have risen to their height and produced their greatest works, the 
mystic comes to the front ; snatches the torch, and carries it on. It is 
almost as if he were humanity’s finest flower; the product at which 
each great creative period of the race had aimed. 

Thus the thirteenth century expressed to perfection the mediaeval 
ideal in religion, art, philosophy, and public life. It built the Gothic 
cathedrals, put the finishing touch to the system of chivalry, and 
nourished the scholastic philosophers. It has many saints, but not 
very many mystics ; though they increase in number as the century 
draws on. ‘The fourteenth century is filled by great contemplatives ; 
who lifted this wave of activity to spiritual levels, and brought all the 
romance and passion of the mediaeval temperament to bear upon the 
deepest mysteries of the transcendental life. Again, the sixteenth 
century, blazing with an intellectual vitality which left no corner of 
existence unexplored, which produced the Renaissance and the 
Humanists and remade the mediaeval world, had hardly reached its 


full development before the great procession of the post-Renaissance 
544 


‘ 


542 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


mystics, with St. Teresa at their head, began. If Life, then—the great 
and restless life of the race—be described under the trite metaphor of a 
billowy sea, each great wave as it rises from the deep bears the mystic 
type upon its crest. 

Our curve, then, will follow close behind that other curve which 
represents the intellectual life of humanity. Its course will be studded 
and defined for us by the names of the great mystics ; the possessors 
of spiritual genius, the pathfinders to the country of the soul. These 
starry names are significant not only in themselves, but also as links in 
the chain of man’s growing spiritual history. They are not isolated 
phenomena, but are related to one another. Each receives something 
from the past: each by his personal adventures enriches it, and hands 
it on to the future. As we go on, we notice more and more this cumu- 
lative power of the past. Each mystic, original though he be, yet owes 
much to the inherited acquirement of his spiritual ancestors. These 
ancestors form his tradition, are the classic examples on which his 
education is based ; and from them he takes the language which they 
have sought out and constructed as a means of telling their adventures 
to the world. It is by their help too, very often, that he elucidates for 
himself the meaning of the dim perceptions of his amazed soul. From 
his own experiences he adds to this store; and hands on an enriched 
tradition of the transcendental life to the next spiritual genius evolved 
bythe race. Hence the names of the great mystics are connected by a 
thread ; and it becomes possible to treat them as subjects of history 
rather than of biography. 

I have said that this thread forms a curve, following the fluctuations 
of the intellectual life of the race. At its highest points, the names of 
the mystics are clustered most thickly, at its descents they become 
fewer and fewer, at the lowest points they die away. Between the first 
century A.D. and the nineteenth, this curve exhibits three great waves 
of mystical activity ; besides many minor fluctuations. They corre- 
spond with the close of the Classical, the Mediaeval and the Renaissance 
periods in history : reaching their highest points in the third, fourteenth, 
and seventeenth centuries. In one respect, however, the mystic curve 
diverges from the historical one. It rises to its highest point in the 
fourteenth century, and does not again approach the level it there 
attains ; for the mediaeval period was more favourable to the develop- 
ment of mysticism than any subsequent epoch has been. The four- 
teenth century is as much the classic moment for the spiritual history 
of our race as the thirteenth is for the history of Gothic, or the 
fifteenth for that of Italian art. 

The names upon our curve, especially during the first ten centuries 


APPENDIX 543 


of the Christian era, are often separated by long periods of time. This, 
of course, does not necessarily mean that these centuries produced few 
mystics : merely that few documents relating to them have survived. 
We have now no means of knowing, for instance, the amount of the true 
mysticism which undoubtedly existed amongst the initiates of the Greek 
or Egyptian Mysteries; how many inarticulate contemplatives of the 
first rank there were amongst the Alexandrian Neoplatonists, amongst 
the pre-Christian communities of contemplatives described by Philo, 
the deeply mystical Alexandrian Jew (B.c. 20-A.D. 40), the innumer- 
able Gnostic sects which replaced in the early Christian world the 
Orphic and Dionysiac mystery-cults of Greece and Italy, or later, the 
thousands of monks and hermits who peopled the Egyptian Thebaid 
in the sixth and seventh centuries. Much real mystical inspiration there 
must have been, for we know that from these centres of life came 
many of the doctrines best loved by later mystics: that the Neo- 
_ platonists gave them the concepts of Pure Being and the One, that the 
New Birth and the Spiritual Marriage were foreshadowed in the 
Mysteries, that Philo anticipates the theology of the Fourth Gospel. 
As we stand at the beginning of the Christian period we see three 
great sources whence its mystical tradition might have been derived. 
These sources are Greek, Oriental, and Christian—z.e., primitive 
Apostolic—doctrine or thought. As a matter of fact all contributed 
their share: but where Christianity gave the new vital impulse to 
transcendence, Greek and Oriental thought provided the principal 
forms in which it was expressed. The Christian religion, by its very 
nature, had a profoundly mystical side. Putting the personality of its 
Founder outside the limits of the present discussion, St. Paul and the 
author of the Fourth Gospel are obvious instances of mystics of the 
first rank amongst its earliest missionaries. The inner history of 
primitive Christianity is still in confusion; but in what has been 
already made out we find numerous, if scattered, indications that 
the mystic life was indigenous in the Church and the natural mystic 
had little need to look for inspiration outside the limits of his creed. 
Not only the epistles of St Paul and the Johannine writings, but also 
the earliest liturgic fragments which we possess, and such primitive 
religious poetry as the “ Odes of Solomon” and the “ Hymn of Jesus,” 
show how congenial was mystical expression to the mind of the 
Church; how eagerly that Church absorbed and transmuted the 
mystic element of Essene, Orphic, and Neoplatonic thought. 
Towards the end of the second century this tendency received 
brilliant literary expression at the hands of Clement of Alexandria 
(c. 160-220), who first adapted the language of the pagan Mysteries to 
the Christian theory of the spiritual life. Nevertheless, the first person 


544 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


after St. Paul of whom it can now be decisively stated that he was a 
practical mystic of the first rank, and in whose writings the central 
mystic doctrine of union with God is found, is a pagan. That person 
is Plotinus, the great Neoplatonic philosopher of Alexandria (A.D. 
205-¢. 270). His mysticism owes nothing to the Christian religion, 
which is never mentioned in his works. Intellectually it contains 
elements drawn from Platonic philosophy, from the Mysteries, and 
probably from the Oriental cults and philosophies which ran riot in 
Alexandria in the third century. These things, however, merely served 
Plotinus on his mystical side as a means of expressing as much of his 
own sublime experience as he chose to tell the world. Ostensibly a 
metaphysician, he possessed transcendental genius of a high order, 
and was consumed by a burning passion for the Absolute. His dis- 
ciple Porphyry has left it on record that on four occasions he saw his 
master rapt to ecstatic union with ‘‘ the One.” 

The Neoplatonism of which Plotinus was the greatest exponent 
became the vehicle in which most of the mysticism—both Christian 
and pagan—of the first six centuries was expressed. But, since the 
emergence of mysticism always means the emergence of a certain 
type of character or genius, not the emergence of a certain type 
of philosophy, Neoplatonism as a whole, and the mysticism which 
used its language, must not be identified with one another: though 
Porphyry (203-304), favourite pupil of Plotinus, seems to have in- 
herited something of his master’s mysticism. Neoplatonism as a whole 
was a confused, semi-religious philosophy, containing many inconsistent 
elements. Appearing at the moment in which the wreck of paganism was 
complete, but before Christianity had conquered the educated world, 
it made a strong appeal to the spiritually minded ; and also to those 
who hankered after the mysterious and the occult. It taught the 
illusory nature of all temporal things, and in the violence of its idealism 
outdid its master Plato. It also taught the existence of an Absolute 
God, the “ Unconditioned One,” who might be known in ecstasy and 
contemplation ; and here it made a direct appeal to the mystical 
instincts of men. Those natural mystics who lived in the time of its 
greatest popularity found in it therefore a ready means of expressing 
their own intuitions of reality. Hence it is that the early mysticism 
of Europe, both Christian and pagan, has come down to us in a Neo- 
platonic dress; and speaks the tongue of Alexandria rather than that 
of Jerusalem, Athens, or Rome. 

The influence of Plotinus upon later Christian mysticism was 
enormous though indirect. During the patristic period all that was 
best in the spirit of Neoplatonism flowed into the veins of the Church. 


APPENDIX 545 


St. Augustine (a.p. 354-430) and Dionysius the Areopagite 
(writing between 475 and 525) are amongst his spiritual children. 
So too is Proclus (412-c. 490), the last of the pagan philosophers. 
Through these there is hardly one in the long tale of the European 
contemplatives whom his powerful spirit has failed to reach. 

The mysticism of St. Augustine is partly obscured for us by the 
wealth of his intellectual and practical life: yet no one can read the 
** Confessions ” without being struck by the intensity and actuality of 
his spiritual experience, and the characteristically mystical formule 
under which he apprehended Reality. In the period in which he 
composed this work it is clear that he was already an advanced 
contemplative. The marvellous intellectual act vities by which he is 
best remembered were fed by the solitary adventures of his soul. No 
merely literary genius could have produced the wonderful chapters in 
the seventh and eighth books, or the innumerable detached passages in 
which his passion for the Absolute breaks out: and later mystics, 
recognizing this fact, will be found to appeal again and again to his 
authority. 

The influence of St. Augustine on the later history of mysticism, 
though very great, was nothing in comparison with that exercised by 
the writings of the strange and nameless character who chose to ascribe 
his works to Dionysius the Areopagite, the friend of St. Paul, and to 
address his letters upon mysticism to Paul’s fellow-worker, Timothy. 
The pseudo-Dionysius. was probably a Syrian monk. The patristic 
quotations detected in his work prove that he cannot have written 
before A.D. 475; it is most likely that he flourished in the early part of 
the sixth century. His chief works are the treatises on the Angelic 
Hierarchies and on the Names of God, and a short but priceless tract 
on mystical theology. Few persons now look at the works of Diony- 
sius: but from the ninth century to the seventeenth they nourished the 
most spiritual intuitions of men, and possessed an authority which it 
is now hard to realize. In studying medieval mysticism one has always 
to reckon with him. Particularly in the fourteenth century, the golden 
age of mystical literature, the phrase ‘‘ Dionysius saith” is of continual 
recurrence: and has jor those who use it much the same weight as 
quotations from the Bible or the great fathers of the Church. 

The importance of Dionysius lies in the fact that he was the first, 
and for a long time the only Christian writer who attempted to describe 
frankly and accurately the workings of the mystical consciousness, and 
the nature of its ecstatic attainment of God. So well did he do his 
work that later contemplatives, reading him, found their most sublime 
and amazing experiences reflected and partly explained. Hence in 

NN 


546 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


describing those experiences, they adopted in their turn his language 
and metaphors ; which afterwards became the classic terms of contem- 
plative science. To him Christian literature owes the paradoxical 
concept of the Absolute Godhead as the ‘Divine Dark,” the Uncon- 
ditioned, “the negation of all that #s”—+.e., of all that the surface 
consciousness perceives—and of the soul’s attainment of the Absolute 
as a “divine ignorance,” a way of negation. This idea is common to 
Greek and Indian philosophy. With Dionysius it enters the Catholic 
fold. 

The Patristic period, running from the second century to the seventh, 
has amongst its great names several deeply mystical spirits who have 
left their mark upon religious history: especially the profound thinker 
and contemplative Origen (c. 185-253) and the Coptic hermit St. Maca- 
rius of Egypt (c. 295-386), the disciple of St. Anthony and friend 
of St. Basil—a forgotten genius in whose writings the pure ideal of 
Christian mysticism attains perfect expression. The period terminates 
with the life of the saintly Pope Gregory the Great (540-604). In 
his works, influenced though they were by the Greek fathers, there 
first emerges that sober and orderly mystical doctrine destined 
to be characteristic of the Roman Church. He was much read by 
succeeding contemplatives ; his practical counsels counterbalancing 
the intense Neoplatonism of Dionysius, whose works were translated 
from Greek into Latin about a.p. 850 by the great Irish philo- 
sopher and theologian, John Scotus Erigena, one of the scholars 
assembled at the court of Charlemagne. From this event we must 
date the beginning of a full tradition of mysticism in Western Europe. 
John the Scot, many of whose own writings exhibit a strong mystical 
bias, is the only name in this period which the history of mysticism can 
claim. We are on the descending line of the “ Dark Ages”: and here 
the curve of mysticism runs parallel with the curves of intellectual and 
artistic activity. 

During the eleventh century the arts revived: and by the beginning 
of the twelfth the wave of new life had reached the mystic level. 
France now made the first of her many contributions to the history 
of mysticism in the person of St. Bernard (1091-1153), the great 
Abbot of Clairvaux: and was the adopted country of another mystic 
almost as great, though now less famous: the Scotch or Irish Richard 
of St. Victor (02. c. 1173), whom Dante held to be “in contemplation 
more than man.” Richard’s master and contemporary, the scholastic 
philosopher Hugh (1097-1141) of the same Abbey of St. Victor at Paris, 
is also generally reckoned amongst the mystics of this period, but with 
less reason ; since contemplation occupies a small place in his theological 


APPENDIX 547 


writings. In spite of the deep respect which is shown towards him 
by Aquinas and other theologians, Hugh’s influence on later mystical: 
literature was slight. The spirit of Richard and of St. Bernard, on the 
contrary, was destined to dominate it for the next two hundred years. 
With them the literature of mediaeval mysticism, properly so called, 
begins. 

This literature falls into two classes: the autobiographical and the 
didactic. Sometimes, as happens in a celebrated sermon of St. Ber- 
nard, the two are combined ; the teacher appealing to his own experi- 
ence in illustration of his theme. 

In the works of the Victorines, the attitude is purely didactic: one 
might almost say scientific. In them, mysticism—that is to say, the 
degrees of contemplation, the training and exercise of the spiritual 
sense—takes its place as a recognized department of theology. It is, 
in Richard’s favourite symbolism, ‘ Benjamin,” the beloved child of 
Rachel, emblem of the Contemplative Life: and in his two chief 
works, “ Benjamin Major” and ‘“ Benjamin Minor,” it is classified and 
described in all its branches, with a wealth of allegorical detail which 
too often obscures the real beauties and ardours beneath. Richard 
of St. Victor was one of the chief channels through whom the antique 
mystical tradition, which flowed through Plotinus and the Areopagite, 
was transmitted to the mediaeval world. In his hands. that tradition 
was codified. Like his master, Hugh, he had the mediaeval passion 
for elaborate allegory, neat arrangement, rigid classification and signifi- 
cant numbers in things. As Dante parcelled out Heaven, Purgatory, 
and Hell with mathematical precision, and proved that Beatrice was 
herself a Nine; so these writers divide and subdivide the stages of 
contemplation, the states of the soul, the degrees of Divine Love: and 
perform terrible /ours de force in the course of compelling all the living 
spontaneous and ever-variable expressions of man’s spiritual vitality to 
fall into orderly and parallel series, conformable to the mystic numbers 
of Seven, Four, and Three. 

The same baneful passion obscures for modern readers the real 
merits of St. Bernard, though it did but enhance his reputation with 
those for whom he wrote. His writings, and those of Richard of 
St. Victor, quickly took their place amongst the living forces which 
conditioned the development of later mystics. Both have a special 
interest for us in the fact that they influenced the formation of our 
national school of mysticism in the fourteenth century. Translations 
and paraphrases of the “ Benjamin Major,” “ Benjamin Minor,” and 
other works of Richard of St. Victor, and of various tracts and epistles 
of St. Bernard, are constantly met with in the MS. collections of mys- 


548 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


tical and theological literature written in England in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries. An early paraphrase of the ‘‘ Benjamin Minor,” 
sometimes attributed to the “ father of English mysticism,” Richard 
Rolle, was probably made by the anonymous author of the ‘Cloud of 
Unknowing,” who was also responsible for the first appearance of the 
Areopagite in English dress. 

The curve of mystical life, then, travelling through the centuries, has 
moved, like all waves of spiritual vitality, from east to west. By the | 
twelfth century it has reached France: and shown, in the persons of 
Richard of St. Victor and St. Bernard, at once the intellectual and 
political strength of the mystic type. At the same time there appear 
in Germany the first of the long line of women mystics: the first, at 
any rate, whose literary works and authentic records have survived. 

With St. Hildegarde (1098-1179) and St. Elizabeth of Schoenau 
(1138-1165) the history of German mysticism begins. ‘These remark- 
able women, visionaries, prophetesses, and political reformers, are the 
early representatives of a typeof mysticism of which St. Catherine of 
Siena is the most familiar and perhaps the greatest example. Exalted 
by the strength of their spiritual intuitions, they emerged from an 
obscure life to impose their wills, and their reading of events, upon the 
world. From the point of view of Eternity, in whose light they lived, 
they attacked the corruption of their generation. Already in the 
inspired letters which St. Hildegarde sent like firebrands over 
Europe, we see German idealism and German practicality struggling 
together; the unflinching description of abuses, the vast poetic 
vision by which they are condemned. These qualities are seen again 
in the South German mystics of the next century: the four Benedic- 
tine women of genius, who had their home in the convent of Helfde. 
These are the Nun Gertrude (Abbess 1251-1291) and her sister St. 
Mechthild of Haskborn (04. 1310), with her sublime symbolic 
visions: then, the poet of the group, the exquisite Mechthild of 
Magdeburg (1212-1299), who, first a déyuine at Magdeburg, where 
she wrote the greater part of “The Flowing Light of the Godhead,” 
came to Helfde in 1268; lastly the celebrated St. Gertrude the 
Great (1256-1311). In these contemplatives the political spirit is less 
marked thanin St. Hildegarde: but religious and ethical activity takes 
its place. St. Gertrude the Great is a characteristic Catholic visionary 
of the feminine type: absorbed in her subjective experiences, her often 
beautiful and significant dreams, her loving conversations with Christ 
and the Blessed Virgin. Close to her in temperament is St. Mech- 
thild of Hackborn; but her attitude as a whole is more impersonal, 
more truly mystic. The great symbolic visions in which her most 


APPENDIX 549 


spiritual perceptions are expressed are artistic creations rather than 
psycho-sensorial hallucinations, and dwell little upon the humanity of 
Christ, with which St. Gertrude is constantly occupied. The terms in 
which Mechthild of Magdeburg—an educated and well-born woman, 
half poet, half seer—describes her union with God, are intensely 
individual, and apparently owe little to earlier religious writers. 
The works of this Mechthild, early translated into Latin, were read by 
Dante. Their influence is traceable in the “‘ Paradiso” ; and by some 
scholars she is believed to be the Matilda of his Earthly Paradise, 
though others give this position to her sister-mystic, St. Mechthild 
of Hackborn. 

Another precursor of Dante begins for us the history of Italian 
mysticism: St. Francis of Assisi, poet and mystic (1182-1226), one 
of the greatest figures of the mediaeval world. It might truly be said of 
St. Francis, as was untruly said of his disciple St. Bonaventura, that all 
his learning was comprised in the crucifix. His mysticism owed 
much to nature, nothing to tradition; was untouched by the formative 
influence of monastic discipline, the writings of Dionysius and St. Ber- 
nard. It was the spontaneous and original expression of his person- 
ality, the rare personality of a poet of the Infinite, a “ troubadour of 
God.” It showed itself in his few poems, his sayings, above all in his 
life : the material in which his genius expressed itself best. He walked, 
literally, in an enchanted world ; where every living thing was a theo- 
phany, and all values were transvaluated by love. 

None of those who came after him succeeded in recapturing his 
secret, which was the secret of spiritual genius of the rarest type: but 
he left his mark upon the history of Europe and the influence of his 
spirit has never wholly died. Italian mysticism descends from St. 
Francis, and in its first period seems indeed to be the prerogative of 
his friars. In the thirteenth century we see it, in all its detachment, 
freshness, and spontaneity, in four very different temperaments. First 
in St. Bonaventura (1221-1274), biographer of St. Francis, a theo- 
logian and doctor of the Church. Perhaps the least mystical of the 
four, he has had the greatest influence on later mystics. He combined 
a contemplative nature with considerable intellectual powers. <A 
student of Dionysius, whose influence pervades his writings, it was he 
who brought the new spirit into line with the tradition of the past. 
Next, in the beautiful figure of St. Douceline (. 1214), the lady of 
Genoa turned déguzme, we find a spirit which, like that of its master, 
could find its way to the Divine through flowers and birds and simple 
natural things. The third of these Franciscan contemplatives, Jaco- 
pone da Todi (02. 1306), the converted lawyer turned mystical 


550 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


poet, lifts Franciscan mysticism to the heights of ecstatic rapture and 
of literary. expression. Jacopone’s work has been shown by Von 
Hiigel to have had a formative influence on St. Catherine of Genoa ; 
and has probably affected many other Italian mystics. 

The Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), last of the four in 
time though not in importance, was converted from a sinful life to 
become a tertiary hermit of the Franciscan order ; and has left in her 
“ Divine Consolations ” the record of a series of profoundly significant 
visions and intuitions of truth. By the sixteenth century her works, 
translated into the vernacular, had taken their place amongst the 
classics of mysticism. In the seventeenth they were largely used by 
St. Ftancis de Sales, Madame Guyon, and other Catholic contempla- 
tives. Seventeen years older than Dante, whose great genius properly 
closes this line of spiritual descent, she is a link between the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries in Italian mysticism. | 

We now approach the Golden Age of Mysticism: and at the 
opening of that epoch, dominating it by their genius, stand that 
astonishing pair of friends, St. Bonaventura, the Franciscan, and St. 
Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican (1226-1274). As with St. 
Augustine, the intellectual greatness of St. Thomas has obscured his 
mystical side. Hence it is commonly stated that fourteenth-century 
mysticism derives from St. Bonaventura, and represents an opposition 
to scholastic theology ; but as a matter of fact its greatest personalities 
—in particular Dante and the German Dominican school—are soaked 
in te spirit of Aquinas, and quote his authority at every turn. 

Most of the mystical literature of the late thirteenth and early four- 
teenth centuries is stillin MS., and much probably remains unidentified. 
An interesting example has lately come to light in “ The Mirror of 
Simple Souls”; a long treatise, translated and edited by an unknown 
English contemplative in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century 
from a lost French original, which was probably written under 
Franciscan influence between the years 1280-1309. The Mirror, 
which its prologue declares to be full of “high ghostly cunning” 
dangerous for common men, is certainly a piece of mystical literature of 
an advanced kind. Strongly influenced by Dionysius, by Richard of 
St. Victor, and by St. Bonaventura, it probably influenced in its turn 
the English writers who produced in the next century “ The Cloud of 
Unknowing” and other profound treatises upon the inner life: and 
these are in fact the works which most nearly resemble it in substance, 
though its manner is its own. 

With “The Mirror of Simple Souls” we bridge not only the gap 
between the mysticism of England and of France, but also that be- 


APPENDIX 551 


tween the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In Europe the mystic 
curve is now approaching its highest point. In the East, that point 
has already been passed. Siifi, or Mahommedan mysticism, appearing 
in the ninth century, attains literary expression in the twelfth in the 
Confessions of Al Ghazzali, and has its classic period in the thirteenth 
in the works of the mystic poets "Attar (c. 1140-1234), Sadi (1184- 
1263), and the saintly Jalalu ’d Din (1207-1273). Its tradition is 
continued in the fourteenth century by the rather erotic mysticism of 
Hafiz (c. 1300-1388) and his successors: and in the fifteenth by the 
poet Jami (1414-1492). 

Whilst Hafiz already strikes a note of decadence for the mysticism 
of Islam, the year 1300 is for Europe a vital year in the history of the 
spiritual life. In Italy, England, Germany, and Flanders mystics of 
the first rank are appearing, or about to appear. In Italy Dante 
(1265-1321) is forcing human language to express one of the most 
sublime visions of the Absolute which has ever been crystallized into 
speech. He inherits and fuses into one that loving and artistic read- 
ing of reality which was the heart of Franciscan mysticism, and that 
other ordered vision of the transcendental world which the Dominicans 
through Aquinas poured into the stream of European thought. For 
the one the spiritual world was alllove: forthe other alllaw. For Dante 
it was both. In the “ Paradiso” his stupendous genius apprehends 
and shows to us a Beatific Vision in which the symbolic systems of all 
great mystics, and many whom the world does not call mystics—of 
Dionysius, Richard, St. Bernard, Mechthild, Aquinas, and countless 
others—are included and explained. 

In Germany at the moment when the “Commedia” was being 
written, another mighty personality, the great Dominican scholar 
Meister Eckhart (1260-1329), who resembles Dante in his combina- 
tion of mystical insight with intense intellectual power, was laying the 
foundations at once of German philosophy and German mysticism. | 
These two giants stand side by side at the opening of the century, 
perfect representatives of the Teutonic and Latin instinct for tran- 
scendental reality. , 

Eckhart, though only a few years younger than St. Gertrude the 
Great, seems to belong to a different world. His commanding per- 
sonality, his strange genius for the supra-sensible, moulded and - 
inspired all whom it came near. The German and Flemish mystics of 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, differing enormously in tempera- 
ment from their master and from each other, have yet something 
in common: something which is shared by no other school. This 
something is derived from Eckhart ; for one and all have passed under 


bd2 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


his hand, being either his immediate disciples, or the friends or 
pupils of his disciples. Towards the end of his life he fell into 
disgrace. A number of propositions extracted from his writings, and 
representing his more extreme views, were condemned by the Church 
as savouring of pantheism and other heresies: and certainly the 
violence and daring of his language easily laid him open to miscon- 
struction. In his efforts to speak of the unspeakable he was con- 
stantly betrayed into expressions which, though doubtless as near as he 
could get to his sublime intuitions of the Absolute, were bound to 
seem paradoxical and exaggerated to other men. Eckhart’s influence, 
however, was little hurt by ecclesiastical condemnation. His pupils, 
though they remained loyal Catholics, contrived also to be loyal dis- 
ciples, and to the end of their lives their teaching was coloured—often 
inspired—by the doctrines of the great, if heretical, scholar. 

The contrast in type between Eckhart and his two most famous 
disciples is an interesting one. All three were Dominican friars, all 
were devout followers of St. Augustine, the Areopagite, St. Bernard, 
and Aquinas: all lived and worked in the valley of the Rhine. The — 
mysticism of Eckhart, so far as he allows us to see it in his sermons— 
the only literary works he has left—is objective ; one might almost say 
dogmatic. He describes with an air of almost terrible certainty and 
intimacy, not that which he has felt, but the place or plane of being 
he has known—“‘ the desert of the Godhead where no one is at home.” 
He is a learned mystic. A great scholar, a natural metaphysician, he 
had taught in the schools at Paris and: Cologne: and his sermons, 
though addressed to the people and delivered in German, give 
evidence of his culture at every turn. 

Of his two pupils, John Tauler (c. 1300-1361), friar-preacher of 
Strassburg, was a born missionary: a man who combined with great 
theological learning and mystical genius of a high order an overwhelming 
zeal for souls. He laboured incessantly to awaken men to a sense of 
their transcendental heritage. Without the hard intellectualism occa- 
sionally noticeable in Eckhart, or the tendency to introspection and 
the excessive artistic sensibility of Suso, Tauler is the most virile of the 
German mystics. The breadth of his humanity is only equalled by 
the depth of his spirituality. His sermons—and these are his only 
authentic works—are trumpet-calls to heroic action upon spiritual 
levels. They influenced many later mystics, especially St. Teresa and 
St. John of the Cross. Tauler is not a subjective writer: only by 
implication can we assure ourselves that he speaks from personal 
experience. He has sometimes, and most unfairly, been d2s- 
cribed as a precursor of the Reformation. Such a claim could 


_ APPENDIX 553 


only be made by those who look upon all! pure Christianity as a form 
of Protestant heresy. He attacked, like St. Catherine of Siena and 
many other mediaeval mystics, the ecclesiastical corruption of his 
period: but in the matter of belief his writings, if read in unex- 
purgated editions, prove him to have been a fervent and orthodox 
Catholic. 

Tauler was one of the leading spirits in the great informal society 
of the Friends of God, which sprang into being in Strassburg, spread 
through the Rhenish province, and worked in this moment of religious 
decadence for the spiritual regeneration of the people. Ina spirit of 
fierce enthusiasm and whole-hearted devotion, the Friends of God set 
themselves to the mystic life, as the only life worthy of the name. A 
tremendous outburst of transcendental activity took place: many 
visions and ecstasies were reported: amazing conversions occurred. 
The movement had many features in common with that of the 
Quakers, excepting that it took place within, instead of without, the 
official Church. With it was connected the third of the trio of great 
German Dominican mystics, the Blessed Henry Suso (¢. 1300-1365), 
a natural recluse and ascetic, and a visionary of the most exuberant 
Catholic type. 

To Suso, subjective, romantic, deeply interested in his own soul 
and his personal relation with God, mysticism was not so much a 
doctrine to be imparted to other men, as an intimate personal ad- 
venture. In his autobiography—a human document far more detailed 
and ingenuous than St. Teresa’s more celebrated Life—he has left us 
the record of all his griefs and joys, his pains, visions, ecstasies, and 
miseries. ven his mystical treatises are in dialogue form, as if he 
could hardly get away from the personal and dramatic aspect of the 
spiritual life. 

Around these three—Eckhart, Tauler, Suso—are gathered other 
and more shadowy personalities: members of this mystical society of 
the Friends of God, bound to the heroic attempt to bring life—the 
terribly corrupt and disordered religious life of the fourteenth century 
—hback into relation with spiritual reality, to initiate their neighbours 
into the atmosphere of God. From one of these nameless members 
comes the literary jewel of the movement: the beautiful little treatise 
called the ‘“ Theologia Germanica,” one of the most successful of many 
attempts to make mystic principles available for common men. Others 
are known to us only as the authors of letters, descriptions of conver- 
sions, visions, and spiritual adventures—literature which the Friends 
of God produced in enormous quantities. No part of the history of 
mysticism has been more changed by recent research than that of the 


554 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Rhenish school: and the work is still but partly done. At present we 
can only record the principal names which we find connected with the 
mystical propaganda of the Friends of God. These are first the nuns 
Margaret Ebner (1291-1351) and her sister Christina, important 
personages in the movement, upon whose historicity no doubts have 
been cast. Margaret appears to have been a psychic as well as a 
mystic: and to have possessed, like Madame Guyon, telepathic and 
clairvoyant powers. Next the rather shadowy pair of laymen, Henry 
of Nordlingen and Nicholas of Basle. Lastly the puzzling and 
fascinating figure of Rulman Merswin (c. 1310-1382), whose story 
of his conversion and mystic life, whether it be regarded as fact or 
‘tendency literature,” is a psychological document of the first rank. 

In immediate dependence on the German school, and like it 
drawing its intellectual vigour from the genius of Eckhart, is the 
mysticism of Flanders: best known to us—though not so well as it 
should be—in the work of its most sublime representative, the 
Blessed John Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), one of the very greatest 
mystics whom the world has yet known. In his early years a priest in 
Brussels, in old age a recluse in the forest of Soignes, Ruysbroeck’s 
influence on his own generation was great In that mystic age great 
mystics were recognized, and their help was eagerly sought. Through 
his disciple Gerard Groot (1340-1384), founder of the Brotherhood 
of the Common Life, his spirit touched in the next generation the 
very different character of Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471). In the 
fifteenth century Denis the Carthusian was a close student of his 
works, and calls him “another Dionysius,” but “clear where the 
Areopagite is obscure”—the highest praise he knew how to bestow. 
His works, with those of Suso, appear in English MSS. early in the 
fifteenth century, taking their place by the side of St. Bernard, St. 
Bonaventura, and the great English mystic Richard Rolle. The 
influence of his genius has even been detected in the mystical literature 
of Spain. In Ruysbroeck’s works the metaphysical and personal 
aspects of mystical truth are fused and attain their highest expression. 
Intellectually indebted to Augustine, Richard of St. Victor, and 
Eckhart, his value lies in the fact that the Eckhartian philosophy is 
merely the medium by which he expresses the results of profound 
experience. He was both saint and seer: truly a ‘* God-intoxi- 
cated man.” 

England, so closely akin to Flanders in religious thought and art, 
first appears in the history of mysticism at the end of the thirteenth 
century, with the shadowy figure of Margery Kempe (probably writing 
¢. 1290), the anchoress of Lynn. We know nothing of this woman’s 


APPENDIX 555 


ulfe; and only a fragment of her ‘‘Contemplations” has survived. 
With the next name, however, Richard Rolle of Hampole (c. 129 o— 
1349), the short but brilliant procession of English mystics begins. 
Rolle, educated at Oxford and widely read in mystical theology, 
became a hermit in order to live in perfection that mystic life of 
“ Heat, Sweetness, and Song,” to which he felt himself to be called. 
Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard, and St. Bonaventura are the 
authors who have influenced him most; but he remains, in spite of 
this, one of the most individual of all writers on mysticism. Rolle 
already shows the practical temper destined to be characteristic of the 
English school. His interest is not philosophy, but spiritual life. 
There is a touch of Franciscan poetry in his descriptions of his 
communion with Divine Love, and the “heavenly song” in which it 
was expressed ; of Franciscan ardour in his zeal for souls. His works 
greatly influenced succeeding mystics. 

He was followed in the second half of the fourteenth century by the 
unknown author—or possibly group of authors—of “The Cloud of 
Unknowing” and its companion treatises, and by the gracious spirit of 
Walter Hilton (04. 1396). With “The Cloud of Unknowing” the 
spirit of Dionysius first appears in English literature. It is the work of 
an advanced contemplative, deeply influenced by the Areopagite and 
the Victorines, who was also an acute psychologist. From the hand 
that wrote it came the first English translation of the Theologia 
Mystica, “ Dionise Hid Divinite”: a work which, says an old writer, 
‘‘ran across England like deere,” so ready was the national conscious- 
ness for the reception of mystical truth. 

Hilton, though also influenced by Dionysius and Richard of 
St. Victor, addresses a wider audience. He is pre-eminently a lover, . 
not a metaphysician : a devout and gentle spirit anxious to share his 
certitudes with other men. The moment of his death coincides with 
the completion of the most beautiful of all English mystical works, the 
Revelations of Love of Julian of Norwich (1343—died after 1413), 
‘‘theodidacta, profunda, ecstatica,” whose unique personality closes 
and crowns the history of mediaeval mysticism. In her the best gifts 
of Rolle and Hilton are transmuted by a “‘ genius for the infinite” of a 
peculiarly beautiful and individual type. She was a seer, a lover, and 
a poet. Her mysticism, owing little to her predecessors, results from a 
direct and personal vision of singular intensity. 

Julian’s life takes us on into the fifteenth century. It was 
probably before her death that this century produced two mystical 
works of the first rank: the exquisite “Imitation of Christ” (written 
1400-1425) and the more amazing, less celebrated ‘ Fiery Soliloquy 


556 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


with God” of A Kempis’s contemporary Gerlac Peterson (c. 1411)— 
last gleams from the setting sun of the mediaeval world. Her later life 
saw the birth of Blessed Joan of Arc (1412-1431), and the appearance 
of a Flemish mystic of a type less congenial to the modern mind, the 
suffering visionary St. Lydwine of Schiedam (1380-1432). 

Already before the completion of Julian’s revelations another woman 
of supreme genius, §t. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), had lived and 
died. The true successor of Dante as a revealer of Reality, and next 
to St. Francis the greatest of Italian mystics, Catherine exhibits the 
Unitive Life in its richest, most perfect form. She was a great active 
and a great ecstatic: at once politician, teacher, and contemplative, 
holding a steady balance between the inner and the outer life. With 
little education she yet contrived, in a short career dogged by persistent 
ill-health, to change the course of history, rejuvenate religion, and com- 
pose, in her Divine Dialogue, one of the jewels of Italian religious 
literature. 

With the first half of the fifteenth century it is plain that the mystic 
curve droops downwards. The great period is over: the new life of the 
Renaissance, already striving in other spheres of activity, has hardly 
touched the spiritual plane. France gives us two names only: Joan 
of Arc, the last gift of the Middle Ages, and Denis the Carthusian 
(1402-1471), a theologian and contemplative deeply read in mystical 
science. He was a close student and passionate admirer of the 
Areopagite and of Ruysbroeck; and his works, now forgotten but 
very popular during the three succeeding centuries, helped to carry 
over into the modern world the best traditions of Christian mysticism. 

With the second half of the century the scene shifts to Italy, where 
a spiritual genius of the first rank appeared in St. Catherine of 
Genoa (1447-1510). She, like her namesake of Siena, was at once an. 
eager lover and an indomitable doer. More, she was a constructive 
mystic, a profound thinker, as well as an ecstatic: an original teacher, 
a busy and practical philanthropist. Her influence lived on, and is 
seen in the next generation in the fine, well-balanced nature of another 
contemplative: the Venerable Battista Yernazza (1497-1587), her 
goddaughter and the child of one of her most loyal friends. 

Catherine of Genoa stands alone in her day as an example of the 
sane and vigorous mystic life. Her contemporaries were for the most 
part visionaries of the more ordinary female type; such as Osanna 
Andreasi of Mantua (1449-1505), Columba Rieti (c. 1430-1501), 
and her disciple, Lucia of Narni. They seem to represent the slow 
extinction of the spirit which burned so bright in Catherine of Siena. 

That spirit reappears in the sixteenth century in Flanders, in the 
works of the Benedictine ascetic Blosius (1506-1565), and, far more 


APPENDIX 557 


conspicuously in Spain, a country almost untouched by the outburst of 
mystical life which elsewhere closed the mediaeval period. Spanish 
mysticism, discernible as an influence in the writings of Luis of Leon 
and Luis of Granada, attained definite expression in the life and 
personality of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the great founder of 
the Society of Jesus. The concrete nature of St. Ignatius’s work, and 
especially its later developments has blinded historians to the fact that 
he was a true mystic; own brother to such great actives as St. Teresa 
and George Fox, actuated by the same vision of reality, passing through 
the same stages of psychological growth. His spiritual sons influenced 
greatly the inner life of the great Carmelite, St. Teresa (1515- 
1582): an influence shared by another and very different mystic, the 
Franciscan saint, Peter of Alcantara (1499-1562). 

Like St. Catherine of Siena, these three mystics—and to them we 
must add St. Teresa’s greatest disciple, the poet and contemplative 
St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)—seem to have arisen in direct 
response to the need created by the corrupt or disordered religious life 
of their time. They are the “saints of the counter-Reformation” ; 
and, in a period of ecclesiastical chaos, flung the weight of their genius 
and their sanctity into the orthodox Catholic scale. Whilst St. 
Ignatius organized a body of spiritual soldiery, who should attack 
heresy and defend the Church, St. Teresa, working against heavy odds, 
infused new vitality into a great religious order and restored it to its 
duty of direct communion with the transcendental world. In this she 
was helped by St. John of the Cross ; who, a scholar as well as a great | 
mystic, performed the necessary function of bringing the personal 
experience of the Spanish school back again into touch with the main 
stream of mystic tradition. All three, practical organizers and pro- 
found contemplatives, exhibit in its splendour the dual character of the ° 
mystic life. They left behind them in their literary works an abiding 
influence, which has guided the footsteps and explained the discoveries 
of succeeding generations of adventurers in the transcendental world. 
The true spiritual children of these mystics are to be found, not in 
their own country, where the religious life which they had lifted to 
transcendent levels degenerated as soon as their overmastering 
influence was withdrawn: but amongst the innumerable contemplative 
souls of succeeding generations who have fallen under the spell of the 
‘Spiritual Exercises,” the ‘Interior Castle,” or the ‘‘ Dark Night of 

the Soul.” 
: The Divine fire which blazed up and exhausted itself so quickly in 
Spain, is next seen in the New World: in the beautiful figure, too little 


558 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


known to English readers, of St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617), the 
Peruvian nun. It appears at the same moment, under a very different 
aspect, in Protestant Germany; in the person of one of the giants 
of mysticism, the “ inspired shoemaker ” Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). 

Boehme, one of the most astonishing cases in history of a natural 
genius for the transcendent, has left his mark upon German philosophy 
as well as upon the history of mysticism. William Law, Blake, and 
Saint-Martin are amongst those who have sat at his feet. The great 
sweep of Boehme’s vision includes both Man and the Universe: the 
nature of God and of the Soul. In him we find again that old doctrine 
of Rebirth which the earlier German mystics had loved. Were it not for 
the difficult symbolism in which his vision is expressed, his influence 
would be far greater than it is. He remains one of those cloud- 
wrapped immortals who must be rediscovered and reinterpreted by the 
adventurers of every age. 

The seventeenth century rivals the fourteenth in the richness and 
variety of its mystical life. Two main currents are to be detected in it: 
dividing between them the two main aspects of man’s communion with 
the Absolute. One, symbolic, constructive, activistic, bound up with 
the ideas of regeneration, and often using the language of the alchemists, 
sets out from the Teutonic genius of Boehme. It achieves its 
successes outside the Catholic Church: and chiefly in Germany and 
England, where by 1650 his works were widely known. In its decadent 
forms it runs to the occult: to alchemy, Rosicrucianism, apocalyptic 
prophecy, and other aberrations of the spiritual sense. 

The other current arises within the Catholic Church, and in close 
touch with the great tradition of Christian mysticism. It represents 
the personal and intimate side of contemplation: tends to encourage 
“ passive receptivity: and produces in its exaggerated forms the 
aberrations of the Qluietists. It has its chief field in the Latin 
countries: France, Italy, and Spain. 

In the seventeenth century England was peculiarly rich, if not in 
great mystics, at any rate in mystically-minded men. Mysticism, it 
seems, was in the air; broke out under many disguises and affected 
many forms of life. It produced in George Fox (1624-1690) the 
founder of the Quakers, a ‘‘great active” of the first rank, entirely 
unaffected by tradition ; and in the Quaker movement itself an outbreak 
of genuine mysticism which is only comparable to the fourteenth- 
century movement of the Friends of God. At the opposite end of the 
theological scale, and in a very different form, it shows itself in- 
Gertrude More (1606-1633) the Benedictine nun, a Catholic contem- 
plative of singular charm. | 


APPENDIX 559 


Gertrude More carries on that tradition of the communion of love 
which flows from St. Augustine through St. Bernard and Thomas a 
Kempis, and is the very heart of Catholic mysticism. In the writings 
of her director, and the preserver of her works, the Wenerable 
Augustine Baker (1575-1641)—one of the most lucid and orderly of 
guides to the contemplative life—we see what were still the formative 
influences in the environment where her mystical powers were trained. 
Richard of St. Victor, Hilton and the “Cloud of Unknowing”; Angela 
of Foligno ; Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroeck ; St. Teresa and St. John of the 
Cross; these are the authorities to whom Augustine Baker most 
constantly appeals, and through these, as we know, the line of descent 
goes back to the Neoplatonists and the first founders of the Church. 

Outside that Church, the twins Thomas Vaughan the spiritual 
alchemist and Henry Yaughan, Silurist, the mystical poet (1622- 
1695) show the reaction of two very different temperaments upon the 
transcendental life. Again, the group of ‘Cambridge Platonists,” 
Henry More (1614-1687), John Smith (1618-1652), Benjamin 
Whichcote (1609-1683), and John Norris (1657-1711) developed 
and preached a philosophy deeply tinged with mysticism ; and Thomas 
Traherne (c. 1637-1674) gave poetic expression to the Platonic vision 
of life. In Bishop Hall (1574-1656) the same spirit takes a devo- 
tional form. Finally, the Rosicrucians, symbolists, and other spiritually 
minded occultists—above all the extraordinary sect of Philadelphians, 
ruled by Dr. Pordage (1608-1698) and the prophetess Jane Lead 
(1623-1704)—exhibit mysticism in its least balanced aspect, mingled 
with mediumistic phenomena, wild symbolic visions, and apocalyptic 
prophecies. The influence of these Philadelphians, who were them- 
selves strongly affected by Boehme’s works, lingered on for a century. 
appearing again in Saint-Martin the “‘ Unknown Philosopher.” 

The Quietistic trend of seventeenth-century mysticism is best seen 
in France. There, at the beginning of the century, the charming 
personality of St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) sets the key of the 
spiritual life of the time, with a delicate but slightly sentimental 
application of the principles of mystic love to popular piety. Under 
the brilliant worldly life of seventeenth-century France, there was some- 
thing amounting to a cult of the inner life. Such episodes as the 
careers of St. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal and St. Vincent de Paul, the 
history of Port Royal, the apostolate of Madame Guyon, the con- 
troversies of Bossuet and Fénelon, and the interest which these events 
aroused, indicate a period of considerable vitality. The spiritual life 
threatened to become fashionable. Hence, its most satisfactory initiates 
are those least in touch with the life of the time; such as the simple 





560 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Carmelite, Brother Lawrence (1611-1691). Lawrence shows the 
passive tendency of French mysticism in its most sane, well-balanced 
form. He was a humble empiricist, laying claim to no special gifts: a 
striking contrast to his contemporary, the brilliant and unhappy genius 
Pascal (1623-1662), who fought his way through many psychic storms 
to the final vision of the Absolute. 

The earliest in date and most exaggerated in type of the true 
Quietists is the Franco-Flemish Antoinette Bourignan (1616-1680): 
a strong-willed and wrong-headed woman who, having renounced the 
world with Franciscan thoroughness, founded a sect, endured consider- 
able persecutions, and made a great stir in the religious life of her time. 
An even greater uproar resulted from the doctrinal excesses of the 
devout Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos (1640-1697); whose 
extreme teachings were condemned by the Church, and for a time 
brought the whole principle of passive contemplation into disrepute. 
Quietism, at bottom, was the expression of a need not unlike that which 
produced the contemporary Quaker movement in England: a need for 
personal contact with spiritual realities, evoked by the formal and un- 
satisfying quality of the official religion of the time. Unfortunately the 
great Quietists were not great mystics. Hence their unbalanced 
propaganda, in which the principle of passivity—divorced from, and 
opposed to, all spiritual action—was pressed to its logical conclusion, 
came dangerously near to nihilism: and resulted in a doctrine fatal not 
only to all organized religion, but to the healthy development of the 
inner life. 

Madame Guyon (1648-1717), the contemporary of Molinos and 
one of the most interesting personalities of the time, though usually 
quoted as a typical Quietist, taught and practised a far more balanced 
‘mysticism. Madame Guyon is an instance of considerable mystical 
genius linked with a feeble surface intelligence. Had she possessed 
the robust common sense so often found in the great contemplatives, 
her temperamental inclination to passivity would have been checked, 
and she would hardly have made use of the unfortunate expressions 
which brought about the official condemnation of her works. In spite of 
the brilliant championship of Fenelon, and the fact that she really con- 
tinues the tradition of feminine mysticism as developed by Angela of 
Foligno, St. Catherine of Genoa, and St. Teresa—though lacking the 
wide, impersonal outlook of these mystics—she was involved in the 
general condemnation of ‘ passive orison” which the aberrations of the 
extreme Quietists had called forth. 

The end of the seventeenth century saw a great outburst of popular 
Quietism; some within and some without the official Church. 


APPENDIX 561 


Amongst the more respectable of these quasi-mystics—all of whom 
appealed to the general tradition of mysticism in support of their one- 
sided doctrine—were Malayal, whose ‘‘ Théologie Mystique ” contains 
some beautiful French translations from St. Teresa, and Peter Poiret 
(1646-1719), once a Protestant pastor, then the devoted disciple of 
Antoinette Bourignan. Later generations owe a considerable debt to 
the enthusiasm and industry of Poiret, whose belief in spiritual qui- 
escence was combined with great literary activity. He rescued and 
* edited all Madame Guyon’s writings; and has left us, in his ‘‘ Bibliotheca 
. Mysticorum,” the memorial of many lost works on mysticism. From this 
"unique bibliography we can see how “ orthodox” was the food which 


nourished even the most extreme of the Quietists: how thoroughly 
they believed themselves to represent not a new doctrine, but the true 
tradition of Christian Mysticism. 


With the close of the seventeenth century, the Quietist movement | 


faded away. The beginning of the eighteenth sees the triumph of its 
‘completing opposite”; that other stream of spiritual vitality which 


arose outside the Catholic Church and flowed from the great per- © 


sonality of Jacob Boehme. If the idea of surrender be the main- 
spring of Quietism, the complementary idea of rebirth is the main- 
spring of this school. In Germany, Boehme’s works had been 
collected and published by an obscure mystic, John Gichtel (1638- 
1710); whose life and letters constantly betray his influence. In 
England, where that influence had been a living force from the 
middle of the seventeenth century, when his writings first became 
known, the Anglo-German Dionysius Andreas Freher was writing 
between 1699 and 1720. 


In the early years ot the eighteenth century, Freher was followed 


by William Law (1686-1761), the Nonjuror: a brilliant  stylisi 
and one of the most profound of English religious writers. Law, 
who was converted by the reading of Boehme’s works from the 
narrow Christianity to which he gave classic expression in the 
‘‘ Serious Call” to a wide and philosophic mysticism, gave, in a series 
ec} writings which burn with mystic passion, a new interpretation and 
an abiding place in English literature to the “ inspired shoemaker’s” 
astounding vision of Man and the Universe. 

The latter part of a century which clearly represents the steep 
downward trend of the mystic curve, gives us three great personalities ; 


all of whom have passed through Boehme’s school, and have placed. 


themselves in opposition to the dry ecclesiasticism of their day. In 

Germany, Eckartshausen (1752-1803), in “’The Cloud upon the 

Sanctuary ” and other works, continued upon individual lines that 
00 


’ 


a 


562 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


tradition of esoteric and mystical Christianity, and of rebirth as the 
price of man’s entrance into Reality, which found its best and sanest 
interpreter in William Law. In France, the troubled spirit of the 
transcendentalist Saint-Martin (1743-1803), ‘‘the unknown philo- 
sopher,” was deeply affected in his passage from a merely occult to a 
mystical philosophy, by the reading of Boehme and Eckartshausen ; 
and also by the works of the English ‘‘ Philadelphians,” Dr. Pordage 
_ and Jane Lead, who had long sunk to oblivion in their native land. 
In England, one of the greatest mystics of all time, William Blake 
(1757-1827), shines like a solitary star in the uncongenial atmosphere 
of the Georgian age. 

The career of Blake, poet, painter, visionary, and prophet, provides 
us with a rare instance of mystical genius forcing not only rhythm and 
words, but also colour and form, to express its vision of truth. So. 
individual in his case was this vision, so strange the elements from 
which his symbolic reconstructions were built up, that he failed in the 
attempt to convey it to other men. Neither in his prophetic books 
‘dark with excessive light,” nor in his beautiful mystical paintings, 
does he contrive to transmit more than great and stimulating sug- 
gestions of “things seen” in some higher and more valid state of 
consciousness. 

An impassioned Christian of a deeply mystical type, Blake, like 
Eckartshausen and Saint-Martin, was at the same time a determined 
and outspoken foe of conventional Christianity. He seems at first 
sight the Ishmael of the mystics, wayward and individual, hardly 
touched by tradition; but as a matter of fact his spirit gathered up 
and expressed the scattered threads of that tradition, parted since 
the Reformation amongst divergent groups of explorers of the unseen. 
It is for this reason that his name may fitly close and complete this 
short survey of European mysticism. 

Whilst his visionary symbolism derives to a large extent from 
Swedenborg, whose works were the great influence of his youth, Blake 
has learned much from Boehme, and probably from his English inter- 
preters. But, almost alone amongst English Protestant mystics, he has 
also received and assimilated the Catholic tradition of the personal and 
inward communion of love. In his stupendous vision of ‘‘ Jerusalem,” 
St. Teresa and Madame Guyon are amongst the “ gentle souls ” whom 
he sees guarding that Four-fold Gate which opens towards Beulah— 
the gate of the contemplative life—and guiding the great ‘‘ Wine-press 
of Love” whence mankind, at the hands of its mystics, has received, 
in every age, the Wine of Life. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Tue WorKS AND LIVES OF THE MYSTICS, 
II. GENERAL WoRKS ON MYSTICISM. 
III. PHILosopHy, PsyCHOLOGY, THEOLOGY. 
IV. ALCHEMY. 

V. Masic. 


PARTS, 


PART I 
THE WORKS AND LIVES OF THE MYSTICS 
1. Texts. 2. Translations. 3. Biographies and Monographs. 


ANONYMOUS WORKS. 
Texts. Jz Manuscript— 
The Cloud of Unknowing. 
The Epistle of Prayer. 
The Epistle of Private Counsel. 
The Epistle of Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul. 
The Treatise of Discerning of Spirits. 
(All in B.M. Harl. 674 and 2373. Compare in Part II., Gardner, The Cell 
of Self-Knowledge.) 
The Mirror of Simple Souls. (B.M. Add. 37,790.) 
Printed— 
The Cloud of Unknowing. Edited from B. M. Harl. 674, by E. Under- 
hill. London, 1912. 
The Mirror of Simple Souls. Selections, with introduction by E. 
Underhill. (Porch Series.) London, 1911. 
AL GHAZZALI. 
Trans. The Confessions of Al Ghazzali. Translated by Claud Field. (Wisdom 
of the East Series.) London, 1909. 
The Alchemy’of Happiness. Translated by Claud Field. (Wisdom ol 
the East Series.) London, 1910. 
(See also in Part II Schmolders.) 
ANGELA OF FOLIGNO, BLESSED. 
Text. Beate Angele de Fulginio Visionum et Instructionum Liber. (Bibliotheca 
mystica et ascetica, Part V.) Cologne, 1849. 
Trans. The Book of Divine Consolations or the Blessed Angela of Foligno 
Translated by M. Steegmann. With an Introduction by Algar Thorold 
(New Mediaeval Library.) London, 1908. 
(See also Part II., Thorold.) 
_ $63 


564 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, SAINT. 


Texts. 


Trans. 


Mon. 


Opera Omnia (Migne, Patrologia Latina. t. 37-47.) Paris, 1844. 

Confessionum, libri tredecim. Ex recog. P. Knoll. Lipsiz, 1898. 

Confessions. Edited by J. Gibb and W. Montgomery. (Cambridge 
Patristic Texts.) 1908. [Latin text and English notes.] 

Works. Edited by Marcus Dods. 15 vols. Edinburgh, 1876. 

Works. Translated and annotated by J. E. Pilkington and others. 8 vols. 
(Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.) London, 1888-92. 

The Confessions. Translated by Dr. E. B. Pusey. (Everyman’s Library.) 
London, 1907. 

The Confessions (first nine books only). Translated, with an Introduction, 
by Dr. C. Bigg. (Library of Devotion.) London, 1898. , 

Hlarnack, A. Augustins Confessionen. Giessen, 1895. 


BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, SAINT. 


Text. 


Trans. 


(Vols. I. 


of Songs.) 


Mons. 


BLAKE, 
Texts. 


Mons. 


Opera Omnia. Notis et observationibus J. Mabillon. (Migne, Patrologia 
Latina, 182-185.) Paris, 1854. 

Life and Works of St. Bernard. Edited by Dom J. Mabillon, O.S.B. 
Translated and edited by S. J. Eales, M.A. 4vols. London, 1889-96. 

andII., Letters; III., Letters and Sermons; IV., Sermons on the Song 


Cantica Canticorum: Sermons! on the Song of Songs. Translated by 
S.J. Eales, M.A. London, 1895. 

The Song of Songs: Extracts from the Sermons of St. Bernard. Edited 
by B. Blaxland. (Library of Devotion.) London, 1898. 4) 

St. Bernard on the Love of God, &c. Translated by M. and C. Patmore. 
Second edition. London, 1884. 

St. Bernard on Consideration. Translated by G. Lewis. Oxford, 1908. 

Suggestions on the Method of Meditation, extracted from St. Bernard’s 
Scala Claustralium by W. B. Trevelyan. London, 1904. 

Morrison, J. Cotter. Life and Times of St. Bernard, Abbot of 
Clairvaux. Second edition. London, 1868. 

Neander, Aug. Der heilige Bernard und seine Zeitalter. Hamburg, — 
1848. 

(Translation) Life and Times of St. Bernard. Translated by M. 

Wrench. London, 1843. 

WILLIAM. 

Works: Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. Edited by E. J. Ellis and W. 
B. Yeats. 3 vols. London, 1893. 

Poetical Works: new and verbatim text by J. Sampson. Oxford, 1905. 

Blake’s ‘‘ Jerusalem.” Edited by E. R. D. Maclagen and A. G. B. 
Russell. London, 1904. 

Blake’s ‘‘ Milton.” Edited by E. R. D. Maclagen and A. G. B. Russell. 
London, 1907. 

The Letters of William Blake and Life by F. Tatham. Edited by 
Archibald Russell. London, 1906. 

Serger, P. William Blake: Mysticisme et Poésie. Paris, 1907, 

De Selincourt, Basil. William Blake: London, 1909. _ 

Gilehrist, Alexander. Life of William Blake. London, 1880. 

Swinburne, A. C. William Blake. London, 1868. 

Symons, Arthur. William Blake. London, 1907. 

Wicksteed, 7. Blake’s Vision of the Book of Job. Jondon, 1910. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 565 


BOEHME, JACOB. 

Texts. J. Boehme, Sein Leben und seine theosophischen Werke in geordneten 
Auszuge mit Einleitungen und Erliuterungen. Allen Christglaubigen 
dargeboten durch J. Claassen. 3B. Stuttgart, 1885. 

Theosophia revelata. Das ist: Alle gottliche Schriften. . . . J. BOhmens. 

7 vols. Amsterdam, 1730-31. 

Trans. The Works of Jacob Boehme. In 4 vols., with Life of the Author. 
English translation. London, 1764-81. 

(The only collected English edition, but incomplete. All Boehme’s works were 
translated by Sparrow and others in the seventeenth century, and are now being 
re-issued. See below. For full bibliography see ‘‘ William Law and the English 
Mystics,’’ by C. Spurgeon, in ‘‘ Cambridge History of English Literature.”) 

The Threefold Life of Man. With an Introduction by the Rev. G. W 
Allen. London, 1909. 

The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. With an Introduction by 
Dr. Paul Deussen. London, IgIo. 

The Forty Questions of the Soul and the Clavis. London, 1911. 

The Way to Christ. London, 1912. 

Treatises of Jacob Boehme. London, 1769. 

Dialogues on the Supersensual Life. Edited, with an Introduction, by 
Bernard Holland. London, rgot. 

The Signatures of All Things, (Everyman’s Library.) London, 1912. 

The Epistles of Jacob Boehme, reprinted from the 1689 edition. 1886. 

Mons. Memoirs of the life, death, burial, and wonderful writings of J. Behmen. 

Now first done at large into English from the original German. With 
preface by J. Okeley. Northampton, 1780. 

Boutroux, &. Le Philosophe Allemand, Jacob Boehme. Paris, 1888. 

Hartmann, F. The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme. London, 1891. 

Martensen, H. L. Jakob Bohme. Theosophische Studien. Grafen- 
hainichen, 1882. 

(Translation) Jacob Behmen: His life and teaching. London, 1885. 

Taylor, Edward. J. Behmen’s theosophick philosophy unfolded, 1691. 

Whyte, Rev. Alexander. Jacob Bohme: an Appreciation. Edinburgh, 


1894. 


BONAVENTURA, SAINT. 
Text. Opera Omnia. Editae a P.P. Collegii S. Bonaventurae. 10 t. Ad 
Claras Aquas 1882-1902. 
Trans. Théologie Séraphique, extraite et traduite par C. et A. Alix. 2 vols. 
(Text and Translation.) Paris, 1853. 
Les six Ailes du Seraphin. Paris, 1860. 
(There are no English translations. The ‘‘ Soliloquies” attributed to Bonaventura 
are not authentic. For his life of St. Francis, wzde zzfra, Francis of Assisi, St.) 
Mons. Sollea, B. L. C. 1 mysticismo di S. Bonaventura studiato nelle sue 
antecedenza e nelle sue esplicazione. Torino, Igo1. 
Lutz, E. Die Psychologie Bonaventuras nach den quellen dargestellt. 
(Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters.) Munster, 


1909. 
BOURIGNAN, ANTOINETTE. 


Text. (Euvres. I9 tomes. Amsterdam, 1686. 
Mons. Anon. An Apology for Mrs. Antonia Bourignan. London, 1699. 


566 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Cockburn, J. Bourignianism Detected: or, the Delusions and Errors 
of Antonia Bourignan and her growing Sect. London, 1698. 

MacEwen, A. R. Antoinette Bourignan, Quietist. London, I9g1o. 

Von der Linde, A. Antoinette Bourignan, das Licht der Welt. Leyden, 


1895. 
CATHERINE OF GENOA, SAINT. 
Texts. Vita Mirabile e dottrina celeste di Santa Caterina da Genova, insieme col 
Trattato del Purgatorio e col Dialogo della Santa. 1743. 
Dialogo di S. Caterina da Genova. Milano, 1882. 
(The authenticity of this dialogue is denied by Von Fliigel.) 
Trans. The Treatise on Purgatory. With a preface by Cardinal Manning. 
London, 1858. 
La Vie et les GEuvres de Ste. Catherine de Génes, traduits par le Vicomte 
de Bussierre. Paris, 1860. 
Mon. Vadllebona, S. La Perla dei Fieschi. Genova, 1887. 
(See also Pt. II., Von Hiigel, for the best modern account of this mystic.) 
CATHERINE OF SIENA, SAINT. 
Texts. S. Catherinae Senensis Vitae. Auctore Fr. Raimundo Capuano. Acta 
S.S. Aprilis. T. III. Paris and Rome, 1860. 
L'Opere della Seraphica Santa Caterina da Siena, Lucca, 1721. 
(Life, works, dialogue, and letters.) 
Le lettere di S. Caterina da Siena. Edited by N. Tommaseo. 4 vols. 
Firenze, 1860. 
Trans. The Divine Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. Translated by Algar 
Thorold. London, 18906. 
St. Catherine of Siena as seen in her Letters. Edited by Vida Scudder. 
London, 1905. 
Mons. Drane, A. 7. The History of St. Catherine of Siena and her Com- 
panions. 2vols. London, 1887. 
Gardner, Edmund. St. Catherine of Siena. London, 1907. 
(By far the best modern biography.) 
Mignaty, M.A. Catherine de Sienne. Paris, 1886. 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 
Text. Opera Omnia. Recog. R. Klotz. 4 vols. Lipsic, 1831-34. _ 
Trans. Writings, translated by W. Wilson. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 1867-69. 
Mons. De Faye. Clément d’Alexandrie. Paris, 1898. 
Wagner. Der Christ und die Welt nach Clemens von Alexandrien. 
Gottingen, 1903. 
DANTE. 
Texts. Tutte le Opere. Rived. nel testo da Dr. E. Moore. Oxford. 1894. 
La Divina Commedia. I] testo Wittiano rived. da Toynbee. London, | 
1900. 
Text and The Hell of Dante. Edited, with Translation and Notes, by A. J. Butler. 
Trans. | London, 1892. ‘ 
The Purgatory. London, 1880. 
The Paradise. London, 1885. 
The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Text, with translation by Carlyle, 
Okey, and Wicksteed. (Temple Classics.) 3 vols. London, 1900. _ 
Vernon, W. W. Readings on the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso; chiefly based 
on the Commentary of Benvenuto da Imola. 6 vols. London, 1894-1900. 
(Text, translation, and full commentary.) 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 567 


Minor The Convivio of Dante, translated by P. H. Wicksteed. (Temple 
works. Classics.) London. 1903. 
Dante’s Convivio. Translated by W. W. Jackson. Oxford, 1909. 
Dante’s Eleven Letters. Translated, with Notes, &c., by C. S. Latham. 
Boston, 1902. 
A Translation of Dante’s Latin Works. (Temple Classics.) London, 
1896. 
The New Life. Translated by D. G. Rossetti. (The Siddal Edition.) 
London, 1899. 
Mons. Saratono, A. Dante e la Visione di Dio. 1909. 
Barelli, V. L’Allegoria della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri. 
Firenze, 1864. 
Bonanni, T. I Cantico al Sole di S. Francesco d’ Assisi comentato nella 
Divina Commedia. Aquila. 1890. 
Capetti, V. L’Animae Varte di Dante. 1907. 
Carroll, Rev. J. S. Exiles of Eternity: an Exposition of Dante’s 
Inferno. London, 1903. 
Prisoners of Hope: an Exposition of Dante’s Purgatorio. London, 

1906. 

Fardel, M.D. la Personne de Dante dans la Divine Comédie: étude 

psychologique. Paris, 1894. 

Ciuffo,G. La visione ultima della Vita Nuova. 1899. 

Gardner, Edmund. MDante’s Ten Heavens. London, 1898. 

Dante and the Mystics. London, 1913. 

—— A Dante Primer. Third Edition. London, 1993. 

Guiliozaz, C. Dante e il Simbolismo. 1900. 

Hettinger, Franz. Dante’s Divina Commedia, its Scope and Value. 

Translated and edited by Rev. H. S. Bowden. London, 1887. 

Perez, Paolo. 1 Sette Cerchi del Purgatorio di Dante, Saggio di Studi. 

Third edition. Milano, 1896. 

Wicksteed, Rev. P. H. Dante: Six Sermons. Second edition. 

London, 1890. 

Dante and Aquinas. London, 1913. 

(I select from the mass of Dante literature a few books useful to the student of 
mysticism. For full bibliographies see the works of Vernon and Gardner, above cited.) 
DENIS THE CARTHUSIAN. 

Texts. Doctoris Ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani opera omnia in unum corpus 

digesta. Cura et labore monachorum S. Ordinis Cartusiensis. (In 
progress.) Monstrolii, 1896. 
D. Dionysii Carthusiani de perfecto mundi contemptu. Colonie, 1533. 

Mons. <Avrogh-Tonning, K. Der Letzte Scholastiker. 1904. 

Mougel, D. A. Denys le Chartreux. Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1896. 
DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE. 
Texts. Opera Omnia. (Migne, Patrologia Graeca. t. 3-4.) Paris, 1855. 
Greek text of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, with Preface by Rev. John 
Parker. London, 1899. 

Trans. Dionise Hid Divinite (B.M. Harl. 674). 

(An old English translation of the Theologia Mystica, attributed to the author of 
‘*The Cloud of Unknowing.”) 

Opera S. Dionysii Areopagitae, &c., a Balthazar Corderius Latine inter- 
pretata. Folio. 1634. 











568 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


(Euvres de Saint Denys l’Aréopagite. Traduits du grec et precédées 
d’une Introduction par l’Abbé Darboy. Paris, 1845. 
The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite. Translated by the Rev. J. 
Parker. 2 vols. Oxford, 1897. 
Mons. Colet, 7. Two Treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius: with In- 
troduction and Translation by J. H. Lupton. London, 1869. 
Erigena. Expositiones super Hiezarchias Caelestes S. Dionysii. 
Roma, 1871. 
Koch, Dr. Hugo. Pseude-Dionysius Areopagita. Maintz, 1900. 
DOUCELINE, ST. : 
Text. La Vie de Ste. Douceline, fondatrice des béguines de Marseille. Edited 
by J. H. Albanés. (Provencal text, French translation.) 
Marseille, 1879. 
Mon. Macdonell, Anne. Saint Douceline. London, 1905. 


ECKARTSHAUSEN, C. VON. 
Texts. Kostis Reise von Morgen gegen Mittag. Leipzig, 1795. 
Gott ist die reinste Liebe. Neu umgearbeitet und vermehrt von F. X. 
Steck. Reutlingen, 1899. 
Der Wolke vor dem Heiligthume. 1802. 
Trans. God is Love most pure, my Prayer and my Contemplation. Freely 
translated from the original by J. Grant. London, 1817. 
The Cloud upon the Sanctuary. Translated, with Notes, by Isabel de 
Steiger. London, 1896. 
ECKHART, MEISTER. 
Texts. Deutsche Mystiche des 14ten Jahrhunderts. Band 2. Meister Eckhart. 
F. Pfeiffer. Gottingen, 1906. 
Meister Eckhart’s Schriften und Predigten aus dem Mittelhochdeutschen 
iibersetzt und herausgegeben von Biittner. I Band Leipzig, 1903. 
Meister Eckhart’s Mystische Schriften, an unsere Sprache tibertragen von 
Gustav Landauer. (Verschollene Meister der Literatur). Berlin, 1903. 
Trans. Meister Eckhart’s Sermons. Translated by C. Field. London, 1909. 
Mons. Denifle, H. S. Meister Eckhart’s Lateinische Schriften (Arch. f. Litt. u. 
Kirchengeschichte des M. A, 1886). 
Jundt, A. Essai sur le Mysticisme speculatif de Maitre pa) 
Strasbourg, 1871. 
Lasson, A. Meister Eckhart der Mystiker. Berlin, 1868. 
Martensen, H. Meister Eckhart, Eine theologische Studie. Hamburg, 1842. 
Michelsen, Cari. Meister Eckhart, Ein Versuch. 1888. 
ERIGENA, JOHN SCOTUS. 
Text. De Divisione Naturae. Monasterii Guestphal, 1838. 
Mon. Gardner, Alice. Studies in John the Scot. London, 1900. 
FOX, GEORGE. 
Text. Journal of George Fox. 2 vols. Eighth edition. London, 1go1. 
FRANCIS OF ASSISI, ST. 
Texts. Opuscula S. Patris Francisci Assisiensis. Ad Claras Aquas, 1904. 
Seraphici Doctoris S. Bonaventura Legendae duae de Vita S. Francisci 
Seraphici. Editae a P.P. Collegii S. Bonaventurae. Ad Claras Aquas. 
1898. 
S. Francisci Assisiensis. Vita et Miracula. Auctore Fr. Thoma de 
Celano. Edited by Fr. E. Alencon, O.F.M. Roma, 1906. 
La Leggenda di S. Francisco scritta da tre suoi compagni. (Latin and 
Italian.) 1899. 


Trans. 


Mons. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 569 


Actus B. Francisci et Sociorum ejus. Edidit P. Sabatier. (Collection de 
documents pour histoire religieuse et litteraire du moyen 4ge. t. 4.) 
1898. 

Speculum Perfectionis seu S. Francisci Assisiensis legenda antiquissima, 
auctore Fr. Leo. Edit P. Sabatier. 1898. 

I Fioretti di S. Francesco e il Cantico del Sole. Milano, 1907. 

The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi. Newly translated, with an Intro- 
duction and Notes, by Fr. Paschal Robinson, O.F.M. -London, 1906. 
The Words of St. Francis from his Works and the Early Legends. 

Selected and translated by Anne Macdonell. London, 1904. 

The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi. New translation into English, 
from the original texts, by Constance Countess de la Warr. London, 
1907. 

The Life of St. Francis, by St. Bonaventura. English translation. 
(Temple Classics.) London, 1904. 

The Lives of St. Francis of Assisi, by Brother Thomas of Celano. Trans- 
lated by A. G. Ferrers Howell. London, 1908. 

Legend of St. Francis by the Three Companions. English translation, by 
E. G. Salter. (Temple Classics.) London, 1902. 

The Mirror of Perfection. English translation by Robert Steele. (Temple 
Classics.) London, 1903. 

The Little Flowers of St."Francis of Assisi. Translated by T. W. Arnold. 
(Temple Classics.) Sixth edition. London, 1903. 

Cotette, T. S. Francois d’Assise. Etude Médicale. Paris, 1895. 

Parenti, Giovanni. Sacrum Commercium: the Converse of Francis and 
his Sons with Holy Poverty. (Latin text and English translation by 
Canon Rawnsley. Introduction by P. Sabatier.) Temple Classics. 
London, 1904. 

Robinson, Fr. Pascal, O.F.M. A Short Introduction to Franciscan 
Literature. New York, 1907. (A valuable and scholarly little book.) 

Sabutier, P. Vie de S. Francois d’Assise. 22¢me édition. Paris, 1899. 

(Translation.) Life of St. Francis of Assisi. Translated by L. S. Houghton. 
London. 1901. 


FRANCIS DE SALES, SAINT. 


Texts. 


Trans. 


Mon. 


CEuvres Completes. 16 vols. Paris, 1835. 

Introduction a la Vie Dévote. (Réimpression textuelle de la Troisiéme 
édition.) 2 tomes. Mountiers, 1895. 

Traicté de l’Amour de Dieu. Paris, 1647. 

Introduction to the Devout Life. Translation, with Notes, &c., by Rev. 
T. Barns. (Library of Devotion.) London, 1906, 

On the Love of God. Edited, with notes, by W. J. Knox Little. 
(Library of Devotion.) London, 1go1, 

Hamon. Vie de S. Francois de Sales. 2 vols. Paris, 1854. 


FRIENDS OF GOD. 
-(See Part I., Merswin, Suso, Tauler ; and Part II., Dalgairns, Delacroix, Denifle, 
Jones, Jundt, Preger: also Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiche der 14ten Jahrhunderts. 


B. and I. 


Gottingen, 1907.) 


GERTRUDE, SAINT. 


Text. 


Sanctae Gertrudis magnae Virginis ordinis S. Benedicti, Legatus Divinae 
Pietatis. Accedunt ejusdem exercitia spiritualia. (Contained in Revela- 
tiones Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianiae. Vol. I. Paris, 1875.) 


570 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Trans. The Exercises of St. Gertrude. London, 1863. 
Mons. Ledos, G. Ste Gertrude. Paris, 1901. 
The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude, by a Religious of the Order of 
Poor Clares. London, 1865. 
GUYON, MADAME. 
Texts. CEuvres Completes. 40 vols. Paris, 1789-91. 
Vie, par Elle-méme. 3 tomes. Paris, 1791. 
Lettres. Edited by Poiret. 4 vols. Paris, 1718. 
Receuil de divers traitez de Théologie Mystique. Paris, 1699. 
Les Opuscules Spirituelles. 2 vols. Paris, 1790. 
(Contains the ‘‘Moyen Court,” ‘‘ Torrents,” and minor tracts and letters.) 
Trans. Autobiography of Mme. Guyon. Translated in full by ,;T. T. Allen. 
2 vols. London, 1897. 
A Short Method of Prayer and Spiritual Torrents. Translated by A. W. 
Marston. London, 1875. 
A Short and Easy Method of Prayer. (Heart and Life Booklets.) 
London, 1900. 
Mons. Masson, Maurice. Fénelon et Mme. Guyon. Paris, 1907. 
Upham, T. C. Life, Religious Opinions, and Experience of Mme. 
Guyon. New edition. With an Introduction by W. R. Inge, M.A. 
London, 1905. 
(See also Part II., Delacroix.) 
HAFIZ. 
Trans. The Divan. Translated into prose, with a Life, note on Sifiism, &c., 
by H. W. Clarke. 2 vols. London, 1891. 
Ghazels from the Divan of Hafiz, done into English by J. H. McCarthy. 
London, 1893. 
HILDEGARDE, ST. 
Texts. Opera Omnia. (Migne, Patrologia Latina. t.197.) Paris, 1855. 
Analecta S. Hildegardis opera, Spicilegio Solesmensi parata. (Pitra, 
Analecta Sacra, vol. viii.) Paris, 1882. 
Mons. Cochem, M. von. Hildegardis die Heilige. Passau, 1844. 
Dahi, J. C. Die Heilige Hildegardis. Maintz, 1832. 
Godefridus. Vie de Ste. Hildegarde. 1907. 
Renard, J. Histoire de Ste. Hildegarde. Paris, 1865. 
HILTON, WALTER. 
Text. The Scale of Perfection. Edited, with an Introduction, by Father 
Dalgairns. London, 1908. 
(The Song of Angels, Hilton’s only other authentic work, is printed by Gardner, 
The Cell of Self-Knowledge. See Part II.) 
HUGH OF ST VICTOR. 
Text. Opera Omnia. (Migne Patrologia Latina. t. 175-177.) Paris, 1854. 
Mons. Hauréau, J. B. Les ceuvres de Hugues de S. Victor: essai critique. 
Paris, 1886. 
Mignon, A. Les origines de la Scholastique et Hugues de S. Victor. 
2 vols. Paris, 1895. 
IGNATIUS LOYOLA, ST. 
Text. Exercitia spiritualia @x autographe Hispanico, notis. J. Roothaan. 
Namur, 1841. 
Trans. The text of the Spiritual Exercises, translated from the original Spanish. 
London, 18809, 


‘ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 571 


The Testament of St. Ignatius Loyola. Translated by E. M. Rix, with a 

preface by G. Tyrrell. London, 1900. 
Mons. /oly, AH. St. Ignace de Loyola (Les Saints), 2iéme dition. Paris, 

1899. 

(Translation.) St. Ignatius of Loyola, translated by M. Partridge. 
London, 1898. 

Malzac, M. Ignace de Loyola: essaie de psychologie religieuse. 1898. 

Ribaniera. Vita Ignatii Loyolae. Naples, 1572. 

Rose, S. Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits. 2nd edition. London, 
1871. 

Thompson, Francts. St. Ignatius Loyola. London, 1909. 


JACOPONE DA TODI. 
Texts. Laude di Fr. Jacopone da Todi. Florence, 1490. 
Laude di frate Jacopone da Todi. A cura di G. Ferri. Societa 
Filologica Romana. Roma, I9gIOo. 
(Also extracts in ‘‘ Poeti del Primo Secolo della Lingua Italiana,”’ Firenze, 1816 ; 
and in ‘* Lyrica Italiana Antica,” Firenze, 1905.) 
JALALU ’D ’DIN RUMI. 
Text. Selected Poems from the Divan i Shamsi Tabriz. Translated by R. A. 
Nicholson. Persian and English. Cambridge, 1898. 
Trans. Masnavii Ma’ navi: the Spiritual Couplets of Jaldlu ’d ’Dfn, translated by 
E. H. Whinfield. London, 1887. 
The Mesnevi. Bk. I., with Life, &c. Translated by J. W. Redhouse. 
London, 1881. 
Jaldlu ’d’Din. Selections by F. Hadland Davis. (Wisdom of the East 
Series.) London, 1907. 
JAMI. 
Trans. Joseph and Zuleika. Translated by A. Rogers. London, 1892. 
Yusuf and Zulaikha. Translated by R. T. H. Griffith. London, 1882. 
Lawa’ih: a treatise on Sifiism. Facsimile of MS. with translation by 
Whinfield and Mirza Muhammed Kazvini. (Oriental Translation Fund, 
new series, 1906.) 
Tamf. Selections, by F. Hadland Davis. (Wisdom of the East Series. 
London, 1908. 
JOAN OF ARC, BLESSED. 
Mons. <Ayroles. La Vraie Jeanne d’Arc. 5 vols. Paris, 1890-1902. 
France, Anatole. Vie de Jeanne d’Arc. Paris, 1908. 
Lang, A. The Maid of France. London, 1908. 
Petit de Julleville. Jeanne d’Arc. (Les Saints.) Paris, 1909. 


JOHN OF THE CROSS, ST. 
Text. Obras. (Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles.) Tome 27. 1853. 
Trans. The Ascent of Mount Carmel. Trans. by David Lewis. New edition 
London, 1906. 
The Dark Night of the Soul. Trans. by David Lewis. New edition 
London, 1908. 
A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul. Trans. by D. Lewis. London, Igr1. 
Mons. Dominiguez Berrueta, M. El Misticismo de S. Juan dela Cruz. 1894. 
Dorithée de Saint Alexis. Vie de St. Jean de la Croix. Paris, 1727. 
Lewis, D. The Life of St. John of the Cross: compiled from all his 
Spanish biographers and other sources. London, 1897. 


572 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


JULIAN OF NORWICH. 


Texts. Revelations of Divine Love, recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich. 
A.D. 1373. Edited by Grace Warrack. London, 1901. 
Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love showed to Mother Juliana of Norwich, 
With a preface by G. Tyrrell. London, 1902. 
‘* Comfortable Words for Christ’s Lovers.”? Visions and Voices vouchsafed 
to Lady Julian recluse at Norwich in 1373. Edited by the Rev. 
Dundas Harford. London, 1911 (a reprint of the earliest text). 


KEMPE, MARGERY. 
(See in Bibliography, Part II., Gardner, The Cell of Self-Knowledge.) 


LAW, WILLIAM. 
Texts. Works. g vols. London, 1762. (Privately reprinted, London, 1893.) 
An Appeal to all who doubt. London, 1742. 
The Spirit of Prayer. London, 1750. 
The Spirit of Love. London, 1759. 
The Liberal and Mystical Writings of W. Law. Edited by W. Scott 
Palmer. London, 1908. 
Mons. Gem, S.H. William Law on Christian Practice and Mysticism. Oxford, 
1905. 
Overton, Canon J. H. Law, Nonjuror and Mystic. London, 1881. 
Walton, C. Notes and Materials for a Biography of William Law, 
London, 1854. 


LAWRENCE, BROTHER. 

Text. Laurent de la Resurrection (Nicholas Herman). Abrégé de la vie de Frére 
Laurent, ses maximes spirituelles, et quelques lettres qu’il a escrites a 
des personnes de pieté. (Receuil de divers traitez de théologie mystique.) 
Paris, 1699. 

Trans. The Practice of the Presence of God. (New edition with additional — 
letters. Heart and Life Booklets.) London, 1906. 
The Spiritual Maxims of Brother Lawrence, together with his character, 
by the Chronicler of the Conversations. (New translation. Heart and 
Life Booklets.) London, 1907. 


LEAD, JANE. 
Texts. The Tree of Faith. London, 1696. 

The Ark of Faith: or a Supplement to the Tree of Faith. London, 1696. 

The Revelation of Revelations. London, 1683. 

A Message to the Philadelphian Society. London, 1696. 

The Ascent to the Mount of Vision, where Many Things were Shown. 
(Reprint.) Littleborough, 1906. 

The Enochian Walks with God found out by a Spiritual Traveller 
(Reprint.) Glasgow, 1891. 

The Signs of the Times. (Reprint.) Glasgow, 1891. 


LYDWINE OF SCHIEDAM, SAINT. 
Text. ActaS.S. Aprilis T. II. Paris and Rome, 1860. 
(The original Lives, by her contemporaries Gerlac and Brugman.) 
Trans. La Vie de la Trés saincte et vrayment admirable Vierge Lydwine, tirée du 


Latin de J. Brugman et mise en abrégé par M. Michel d’Esne, évesque de 
Tournay. Douai, 1608. 


Mon, Huysmans, J. K. Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam. 3rd. ed. Paris, 1901. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 573 


MECHTHILD OF HACKBORN, SAINT. 
Texts. Liber Specialis Gratiz. (Contained in Revelationes Gertrudianae a 
Mechtildianiae, vol. 2. Paris, 1875.) 
Revelationes Selectae S. Mechthildis. Edited by Dr. A. Heuser. 
(Bibliotheca Mystica et Ascetica.) Cologne, 1854. 
Das Buch des geistlichen Gnaden (Reliquien aus dem Mittelalter, 
Band 3). 1860. 
Trans. Select Revelations of S. Mechtild, Virgin. Translated from the Latin by 
a secular priest. (Mediaeval Library of Mystical and Ascetical Works.) 
London, 1872. 


MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG. 
Texts. Offenbarungen der Schwester Mechthild von Magdeburg, oder Das 
Fliessende Licht der Gottheit aus der einzigen Handschrift des Stiftes 
Einsiedeln, herausgegeben von P. Gall Morel. Regensburg, 1869. 
Lux Divinitatis. (Contained in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mech- 
tildianiae, vol. 2. Paris, 1875.) 
Das flieszende Licht der Gottheit von Mechthild von Magdeburg. Ins 
Neudeutsche iibertragen und erldutert von Mela Escherich. Berlin, 
1909. 
MERSWIN, RULMAN. 
Texts. Schmidt, Nikolaus von Basel. Wien, 1866. (Some of Merswin’s 
treatises are printed in this book.) 
Das Buch von den Neun Felsen. Leipzig, 1859. 
Mons. /undt, A. Rulman Merswin et l’Ami de Dieu de l’Oberland. Paris, 
1890. 
Rieder, Cari. Der Gottesfreund von Oberland. Innsbriick, 1905. 


MOLINOS, MIGUEL DE. 
Text. Manuductio Spiritualis. Leipzig, 1687. 
Trans. The Spiritual Guide which disentangles the Soul. Edited with Intro- 
duction by Lyttleton. (Library of Devotion.) London, 1908. 
MORE, GERTRUDE. 
Texts. The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Virtuous and Religious Dame 
Gertrude More. Paris, 1658. 
The Inner Life and Writings of Dame Gertrude More. Edited by 
Dom Benedict Weld Blundell, O.S.B. Vol. I., The Inner Life. 
Vol. II., The Writings. London, I9gIo. 
The Holy Practices of a Divine Lover. Edited, with Introduction, by 
Amie Dom H. Lane Fox. London & Edinburgh, 1909. 
OSANNA ANDREASI, BLESSED. 
Mon. Gardner, E. A Mystic of the Renaissance: Osanna Andreasi of Mantua. 
Privately printed, London, 1910. 
PASCAL. 
Text. Les Pensées Fragments et Lettres de Blaise Pascal. Edited by Faugére. 
znd ed. Paris, 1897. 
(Pascal’s other works, being unrelated to his mystic life, are not given.) 
Trans. The Thoughts of Pascal. Edited by C. S. Jerram. (The Library of 
Devotion.) London, n.d. 
Mons. Sowtroux, Emile. Pascal. Paris, 1g00. 
St. Cyr, Viscount. Pascal London, 19I!o. 


574 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


PETERSEN, GERLAC. 
Text. Gerlaci Petri, ignitum. cum Deo soliloquium. Cologne, 1849. (A 
reprint of the edition of 1616.) 
Trans. The Fiery Soliloquy with God of the Rev. Master Gerlac Petersen, 
translated from the original Latin by a secular priest. (Mediaeval Library 
of Mystical and Ascetical Works.) London, 1872. 


PrFiLo. 
Text. Opera. Recog. L. Cohn et P. Wendland. 5 vols. Berlin, 1896-1906. 


Trans. Works, tr. Yonge. 4 vols. London, 1854. 
Philo on the Contemplative Life. Edited by F. C. Conybeare. Oxford, 
1895. 
Mons. Drummond, J. Philo: the Jewish Alexandria philosopher. London, 
1888. 
Lake, J. W. Plato, Philo, and Paul. London, 1874. 
kéville, 7. La Doctrine du Logos dans Philon. Paris, 1881. 


PLOTINUS, 
Text. Plotini Enneades, preemisso Porphyrii de Vita Plotini deque ordine 
librorum ejus libello. Edidit R. Volkmann. 2 vols. Leipzig, 
1883-4. 
Trans. Select Works of Plotinus. Translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor. 
Five Books of Plotinus. Translated by T. Taylor. London, 1794. 
Plotinus on the Beautiful. Translated by S. Mackenna. London, 1908. 
Les Ennéades de Plotin, traduites par M. N. Bouillet. 3 tomes. Paris, 
1857-61. 
Mon. Waztiy, C. J. The Wisdom of Plotinus, a Metaphysical Study. 
London, 1909. 
PROCLUS. 
Text. Opera. Edited by V. Cousin. 6tomes. Paris. 1820-27. 
Trans. The Six Books of Proclus on the Theology of Plato. Translated by 
T. Taylor. 2 vols. London, 1816. 
Two Treatises of Proclus. Translated by T. Taylor. London, 1833. 


RICHARD OF ST. VICTOR. 
Text. Opera Omnia. (Migne, Patrologia Latina, t. 196.) Paris, 1855. 
See also Pt. II., Gardner, The Cell of Self-Knowledge, which contains 
an Old English translation of Richard of St. Victor’s Benjamin Minor. 
ROLLE, RICHARD, OF HAMPOLE. 
Texts. Works of Richard Rolle of Hampole and his followers. Edited by C. 
Horstman. 2vols. (Library of Early English Writers.) London, 1895. 
(Contains an admirable biographical introduction and bibliography.) 
The Form of Perfect Living. Edited by G. E. Hodgson. London, rgro. 
English Prose Treatises. (E.E.T.S. Vol. XX.) London, 1866. 
The Fire of Love, and The Mending of Life. Englished by R. Misyn. 
(E.E.T.S., Vol. CVI.). London, 1896. 
ROSE OF LIMA, ST. 
Text. Hansen Leonardus. Rosa Peruana. Vita Mirabilis et Mors pretiosa 
S. Rosae a Sancta Maria. Ulyssipone Occidentali, 1725. 
Trans. The Life of S. Rose of Lima (paraphrase of above). In series of The 
Saints and Servants of God. Edited by F. W. Faber. London, 1847. 
Mons. Cafes, F. M. The Flower of the New World; a short history of 
St. Rose of Lima. 1899. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 575 


Renouard de Bussterre (M. T. de). Le Perou et Ste. Rose de Lima. 
Paris, 1863. 
RUYSBROECK. 
Text. Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec, ed J. David. 6 vols. Ghent, 1858-68. 
Trans. Opera Omnia: trad. Surius. Cologne, 1652. 
(Euvres de Ruysbroeck |’Admirable, trad. du Flamand par les Bénédictins 
de S. Paul de Wisques. Brussels, 1912. (In progress.) 
L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles de Ruysbroeck 1’ Admirable, trad. par 
Maurice Maeterlinck. Brussels, 1900. 
The Book of the Twelve Béguines, trans. by J. Francis. London, 1913. 
(Euvres Choisies, traduit par E. Hello. Paris, 1902. (Paraphrase.) 
Flowers of a Mystic Garden. London, 1912. (Trans. of above.) 
Mons. <Azger, A. De doctrina et meritis Joannis van Ruysbroeck. 1892. 
Engelhardt, J. G. vom. Richard von St. Victor und J. Ruysbroeck. 
Erlangen, 1838. 
Otterloo, A. A. van. Johannis Ruysbroeck. ’S Gravenhage, 1896. 
Schmidt, G. C. Etude sur J. Ruysbroeck. 1859. 
Scully, Dom. V. A Mediaeval Mystic: B. John Ruysbroeck. London, 
1gIO. 
SA’DI. 
Text. Gulistan. New edition, collated by E. B. Eastwick. Hertford, 1850. 
Trans. The Gulistan: translated by E. B. Eastwick. Hertford, 1852. 
SAINT-MARTIN. 
Texts. Tableau naturel des rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l’'Homme et 
l Univers. 1782. 
L’Homme de Désir, par le Philosophe Inconnu. 1802. 
Des Nombres: ceuvre posthume. Edited by L. Schauer, Paris, 1861. 
La Correspondence inédite de L. C. de Saint-Martin dit le Philosophe 
Inconnu, et Kirchberger, Baron de Liebestorf. Edited by Schauer and 
Chuquet. Paris, 1862. 
Trans. Man: histrue nature. Translated by E. B. Penny. Lndon, 1864. 
Theosophic Correspondence. Trans. by, E. B. Penny. London, 1863. 
Mons. Caro, Z. M. Du Mysticisme du 18éme Siécle: essai sur la Vie et la 
Doctrine de Saint-Martin. Paris, 1852. 
Matter, A. J. Saint-Martin le Philosophe Inconnu, sa vie et ses écrits. 
1862. 
Waite, A. E. The Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the Un- 
known Philosopher, and the substance of his transcendental doctrine. 
London, Igo!. 
SUSO. 
Texts. Die Schriften des seligen H. Seuse. Edited by H. S. Denifle. Miin- 
chen, 1876. 
Heinrich Susos Leben und Schriften. Edited by M. Diepenbrock. 
Regensburg, 1825. 
Trans. Céuvres mystiques du B. Henri Suso. Traduction par le P. G. Thiriot. 
2 vols. Paris, 1899. 
The Life of B. Henry Suso, by Himself. London, 1865. 
Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. London, 1910. 
TAULER. 
Texts. Johann Tauler’s Predigten nach den besten Ausgaben in die jetzige Schrift- 
sprache tibertragen von J. Hamberger. Zweite neu bearbeitete Auflage. 
3 Band. Prague, 1872. 


576 


Trans. 


Mon. 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


D. Joannes Thauleri. Sermones de tempore et de Sanctis totius anni, 
plane piissime: R. F. Laurentio Surio in Latinum Sermonem trans- 
lata, &c. Cologne, 1603 

The History and Life of the Rev. Doctor John Tauler, with 25 of 
his sermons, translated ‘by Susanna Winkworth. Preface by Charles 
Kingsley. New edition. London, 1906. 

The Inner Way: Being 36 sermons for Festivals. New translation 
with Introduction by Rev A. W. Hutton. (Library of Devotion.) 
3rd edition. London, 1909. 

Sermons .. . traduits de l’Allemand par C. Saint-Foi. 2 tomes. 
Paris, 1845. 

Oeuvres Completes. Trad. litterale de la version latine de Surius: par 
G. P. Noel, O. P. 8 vols. Paris, 1911. (In progress). 

Denifie. Tauler’s Bekehrung in Quellen u. Forschungen zur Sprach-u. 
Cultur-geschichte. Strasburg, 1879. 


TERESA, SAINT. 


Text. 


Trans. 


5 


Mons. 


Obras y escritos de Santa Teresa de Jesus. Novisima edicion corrigida y 
aumentada. 6 vols. Madrid, 1881. (The best edition of the Spanish 
text.) 

CEuvres de Sainte Thérése, traduites sur les manuscrits originaux par le 
Pére Marcel Bouix. Huitiéme édition. 3 tomes. Paris, 1907. 

Lettres, traduites selon l’ordre chronologique par le Pére Marcel Bouix. 
Troisiéme édition. 3 tomes. Paris, 1898. 

The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, written by Herself, translated by 
D. Lewis. 3rd edition, with Notes and Introduction by Zimmerman. 
London, 1904, 

The Letters of St. Theresa, trans. by the Rev. J. Dalton. London, 1902. 

The Book of the Foundations of St. Teresa of Jesus, written by Herself. 
Translated by D. Lewis. London, 1871. 

The History of the Foundations, translated by Sister Agnes Mason, with 
preface by the Right Hon. Sir E. M. Satow. 1909. 

‘The Interior Castle: translated from the autograph of St. Teresa by the 
Benedictines of Stanbrook Abbey, with Notes by Zimmerman. Lon- 
don, 1906. 

The Way of Perfection, translated from the autograph of St. Teresa by 
the Benedictines of Stanbrook Abbey, with Notes by Zimmerman. 
London, IgII. 

Barine, Arvéde. Psychologie d’une Sainte : Sainte Therese. 

(Revue des Deux Mondes. 1¢ Juin, 1886.) 

Carmelite, Une. Histoire de Ste. Thérése. 2 vols. Paris, 1887. 

Coleridge, H. J. Wife and Letters of St. Teresa. 3 vols. London, 1872. 

Colvill, H. H. Saint Teresa of Spain. London, 1909. 

Curzon, H. de. Bibliographie Térésienne. Paris, 1902. 

Genonville. S. Thérése et Son Mysticisme. Montaubon, 1893. 

Graham, G. Cunninghame. Santa Teresa. 2 vols. London, 1894. 


{A brilliant picture of St. Teresa’s life and times.) 


foly, H. Ste. Thérése (Les Saints). Paris, 1902. 

(Translation.) St. Teresa, translated by E. Waller. London, 1903. 
Lagardere. S. Thérése, Psychologique et Mystique. Besancon, 1900. 
Norero, H. ’Union mystique chez Ste. Thérése. Macon, 1905. 
Whyte, A. Santa Teresa: an appreciation. Edinburgh, 1897. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 577 


Yepes, D. de. Vida, Virtudes, y Milagros de Santa Teresa de Jesus. 
Lisbon, 1616. 
THEOLOGIA GERMANICA. 
Text. Theologia Deutsch. Neue nach der einziger bis jetzt bekannten Hand- 
schrift besorgte vollstandige Ausgabe. Edited by F. Pfeiffer. Stuttgart, 
1851. 
Deutsche Theologie, herausgegeben von P. Kohler. Berlin, 1859. 
Trans. Theologia Germanica, translated from Pfeiffer’s edition; edited by 
Susanna Winkworth, with a Preface by Charles Kingsley. 4th edition. 
(Golden Treasury Series). London, 1907. 
THOMAS A KEMPIS. 
Texts. Opera Omnia. 1 vol. Cologne, 1660. 
De Imitatione Christi. Edited by b. E. Puyal. Paris, 1886. 
Libri Quatuor de Imitatione Christi, in versiculos distributi, Justa rythmum 
ex-M.S.S. de promptum, Cura et studie, Dr. C. Albini de Agala. 
Paris, 1905. 
Trans. Of the Imitation of Christ. Revised translation by Dr. C. Bigg. 
(Library of Devotion.) London, 1901. 
The Imitation of Christ: the Earliest English Translation. (Everyman’s 
Library.) London, n.d. 
Mons. Butler, Dugald. Thomas a Kempis, a religious study. London, 
1908, 
De Montmorency, J. G. Thomas a Kempis. London, 1906. 
Kettlewell, S. The authorship of the De Imitatione Christi. London, 
1877. 
—— Thomas a Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life. 
London, 1882. P 
Wheatley, L. A. The Story of the Imitatio. London, 1891. 
VERNAZZA, VEN. BATTISTA. 


Text. Opere Spirituali. Genova, 1755. 
See also in Pt. II., Von Hiigel, The Mystical Element of Religion. 


PART II 
GENERAL WORKS ON MYSTICISM 


Auger. Etude sur les Mystiques des Pays Bas au Moyen Age. (Collection des 
Mémoires Publiés par l’Academie Royale de Belgique, tome 46.) 

Baker, Yen. Augustine. Holy Wisdom; or, Directions for the Prayer of Con- 
templation. (Edited by Abbot Sweeny, O.S.B.) London, 1908. 

Benson, Rey. R. H. Mysticism. (Westminster Lectures.) London, 1907. 

Biscioni, A. M. Lettere di Santie Beati Fiorentini. Firenze, 1736. 

Boutroux, Emile. Psychologie du Mysticisme. (Bulletin de l'Institut Psycho- 
logique.) Paris, 1902. 

Bremond, Abbé H. La Provence Mystique. Paris, 1908. 

Brenier de Montmorand. Ascéticisme et Mysticisme. (Revue Philosophique, 
Mars, 1904.) 

Chaillot. Principes de Théologie Mystique. Paris, 1866. 

Chandler, Rey. A. Ara Cceli; studies in mystical religion. London, 1908. 

Been 33 ray J.B. The German Mystics of the Fourteenth Century. London, 
1858. 

PP 


578 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Delacroix, H. Essai sur le Mysticisme Spéculatif en Allemagne au XIV. Siécle. 
, Paris, 1900. 
Etudes d’Histoire et de Psychologie du Mysticisme. Les Grands Mystiques 
Chrétiens. Paris, 1908. 

(Detailed analyses of St. Teresa, Madame Guyon, Suso. One of the most important 
of recent works on the psychology of Mysticism. Indispensable to the 
student.) 

Denifle, H. S. Das geistliche Leben: Blumenlese aus der deutschen Mystikern 
der 14 Jahrhunderts. Graz, 1895. 

Devine, Rey. A. A Manual of Mystical Theology. London, 1903. (Roman 
Catholic.) 

Franck, A. La Philosophie Mystique en France a la fin du 18* Siécle. Paris, 
1866. 

Gardner, Edmund. The Cell ot Self-Knowledge: Seven Old English Mystical 
Works. Reprinted from Pepwell’s edition, with Notes and Introduction. 
(New Mediaeval Library.) London, 1910. 

(This contains a translation of Richard of St. Victor’s Benjamin Minor, a short 
passage from St. Catherine of Siena, the only known work of Margery 
Kempe, Hilton’s Song of Angels, and three works of the Cloud of 
Unknowing group—The Epistles of Prayer, Discretion, and the Discerning 
of Spirits.) 

Gebhart. L’Italie Mystique. Cinquieme edition. Paris, 1906. 

Gichtel, J.G. Theosophia Practica. Leyden, 1722. 

Godfernaux. Sur la Psychologie du Mysticisme. (Revue Philosophique, Fevrier, 
1902.) 

Goérres, J. J. v. Die Christliche Mystik. 5 Bande. Regensburg, 1836-42. 

Gregory, Eleanor ©. An Introduction to Christian Mysticism. London, | 
I9ol. 

A Little Book of Heavenly Wisdom. Selections from some English Prose 
Mystics. With Introduction. (Library of Devotion ) London, 1904. 

Hébert, M. Le Divin: Experiences et hypothéses. Paris, 1907. 

Hello, E. Physionomies de Saints. New edition. Paris, 1900. 

Heppe, H. Geschichte der Quietistischen Mystik. Berlin, 1875. 

Inge, Dr. W. R. Christian Mysticism. (Bampton Lectures.) London, 1899. - 

(A standard work indispensable to the student.) 

Studies of English Mystics. (St. Margaret's Lectures.) London, 190%. 

Light, Life, and Love. Selections from the German Mystics. With In- 
troduction. (Library of Devotion.) London, 1905. 

Personal Idealism and Mysticism. (Paddock Lectures.) London, 1907. 

Joly, Henri. Psychologie des Saints. Paris, 1895. 

Translation: The Psychology of the Saints. With Preface and Notes by George 
Tyrrell. London, 1808. 

Jones, Dr. Rufus M. Studies in Mystical Religion. London, 1909. 

(From the Quaker standpoint. Contains an excellent account of the Friends of God.) 

Jundt, A. Les Amis de Dieu au XIV. Siécle. Paris, 1879. 

Lehmann, E. Mysticism in Heathendom and Christendom. Translated by G. M. G. 
Hunt. London, Ig10. 

Lejeune, Abbé P. Manuel de Théologie Mystique. 1897. 

Leuba. Les Tendances Fondamentales des Mystiques Chrétiens. (Revue Philo- 
sophique, Juillet, 1902.) 

(An important psychological study.) 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 579 


Malaval. La Pratique de la vraie théologie mystique. 2tomes. Paris, 1709. 

(Contains, besides Malaval’s own work, a French translation of part of St. Teresa’s 
Interior Castle.) 

Ossuna, Francesco de. Abecedario Spiritual. 6 tomes. (Gothic letter.) Medina, 
1554. 

(This is the book from which St. Teresa first learned the method of contem- 
plation.) 

Pacheu, J. Psychologie des Mystiques Chrétiens. Paris, 1909. 

Palmer, E. H. Oriental Mysticism. A Treatise on the Siifiistic and Unitarian 
Theosophy of the Persians. Cambridge, 1867. 

Patmore, Coventry. The Rod, the Root, and the Flower. 2nd edition. Lon- 
don, 1907. 

Poiret, Pierre. Theologice Mysticz idea generalis. Paris, 1702. 

Petri Poireti Bibliotheca Mysticorum Selecta. Paris, 1708. 

(This contains a useful list of mystical and ascetic works, many of which are now 
lost.) 

Poulain, A. Les desiderata de la Mystique. (Etudes Jesuites.) Paris, 
1898. 

Graces d’Oraison. Paris, 1906. 
Translation. The Graces of Interior Prayer. London, 1910. 
Preger, W. Geschichte der deutschen Mystik in Mittelalter. B. 1-3. Leipzig, 


1874-93. 
Récéjac, E. Essai sur les fondements de la Connaissance Mystique. Paris, 
1897. 


Translation. Essay on the bases of the Mystic Knowledge. Translated by S. C. 
Upton. London, 1899. 
(A very important and original study of the psychology of mysticism.) 
Reinach, 8. Une Mystique au 18* Siécle. (Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Paris, 
1906. 
Renda, Antonio. II Pensiero Mistico. Milano e Palermo, 1902. 
Ribet, J. La Mystique Divine. 3 tomes. Paris, 1879. 
(A standard Roman Catholic work. Elaborate, but uncritical.) 
L’Ascétique Chrétienne. Paris, 1888. 
Rousselot, P. Les Mystiques Espagnols. Paris, 1867. 
Saudreau, L’Abbé. La Vie d’Union a Dieu. Paris, 1900. 
L’Etat Mystique. Paris, 1903. 
Les faits extraordinaires de la Vie Spirituelle. Paris, 1908. 
Translations. The Degrees of the Spiritual Life, trans. by Dom Bede Camm, 
O.S.B. 2vols. London, 1907. 
The Way that Leads to God, trans. by L. Yorke Smith. London, 19!0. 
Scaramelli, G. B. Il direttorio Mistico. Roma, 1900. 
Schmélders, A. Essai sur les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes. Paris, 
1842. 
(Contains the best account of the Sifi philosopher, Al Ghazzali.) 
Spurgeon Caroline. Mysticism in English Literature. London, 1913. 
Thorold, Algar. An Essay in Aid of the better Appreciation of Catholic Mysticism, 
illustrated from the writings of the Blessed Angela of Foligno. London, 


1900. 
Tollemache, M. Spanish Mystics. London, 1886. 
Vaughan, R. A. Hours with the Mystics. 3rd edition. 2 vols. London, 1880. 
(Full of information, but very unsympathetic in tone.) 


580 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Yon Hiigel, Baron F. The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in St. 
Catherine of Genoa and her Friends. 2 vols. London, 1908. 

(Indispensable to the student. The best work on Mysticism in the English 
language.) 

Waite, A. E. Studies in Mysticism. London, 1906. 


PART III 
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND THEOLOGY 


Adam, James. 
The Religious Teachers of Greece. (Gifford Lectures.) 1908. 
Bergson, Henri. 
Essai sur les Données immédiates de la Conscience. Paris, 1889. 
Matiére et Mémoire. Paris, 1896. 
Introduction a la Métaphysique. Paris, 1903. 
L’Evolution Créatrice. Paris, 1907. 
Translations. Time and Free Will: an Essay on the Immediate data o: Con- 
sciousness, translated by F. L. Pogson. London, rgio. 
Matter and Memory, trans. by N. Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London, 1910. 
Creative Evolution, trans. by A. Mitchell. London, Ig11I. 
Bigg, Dr. CG. 
The Christian Platonists of Alexandria. (Bampton Lectures). Oxford, 
1886. 
Neoplatonism. London, 1895. 
Binet, A. 
La Suggestibilité. Paris, 1900. 
Boutroux, Emile. 
Science et Religion dans la Philosophie Contemporaine. Paris, 1908. . 
Translation. Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy. Translated by 
G. J. Nield. London, 1909. 
(Compare Pt. I., Boehme.) 


“ Boyce Gibson, W. R. 


An Introduction to Rudolph Eucken’s Philosophy. London, 1908. 
God with us. London, 1909. 
Bradley, F. H. 
Appearance and Reality. 2nded. London, 1897. 
Brunschvicg, L. 
Introduction a la Vie de l’Esprit. 1900. 
Bucke, R. M. 
Cosmic Consciousness: a study in the evolution or the Human Mind. 
Philadelphia, 1905. 
Caird, Edward. 
The Evolution of Religion. 2 vols. (Gifford Lectures.) Glasgow, 1893. 
The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers. 2vols. Glasgow, 
1904. 
Caird, John. 
Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Glasgow, 1880. 
Fundamental Ideas of Christianity. Glasgow, 1899. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 581 


Cutten, G. B. 
The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity. London, 1909. 
Dewing, A. 8. 
Life as Reality : a Philosophical Essay. London, 1910. 
Driesch, Hans. 
The Science and Philosophy of Organism. 2 vols. (Gifford Lectures.) 1908. 
Elsee, C. 
Neoplatonism in its Relation to Christianity. London, 1908. 
Hucken, Rudolph. 
Die Einheit des Geisteslebens. Leipzig, 1888. 
Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt. Leipzig, 1896 
Geistige Str6mungen der Gegenwart. Leipzig, 1909. 
Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion. 2nded. Leipzig, 1905. 
Die Lebensanschauungen der Grossen Denker. Leipzig, 1909. 
Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1907. 
Der Sinn und Wert des Lebens. Leipzig, 1908. 
Translations. The Life of the Spirit: an Introduction to Philosophy. Translated 
by F. L. Pogson. 2nded. London, 1909. 
The Problem of Human Life. Translated by W. S. Hough and W. R. Boyce 
Gibson. London, 1909. 
The Meaning and Value of Life. Translated by L. J. and W. R. Boyce 
Gibson. London, 1909. 
Christianity and the New Idealism. Translated by L. J. and W. R. Boyce 
: Gibson. New York, 1909. 
Franck, A. 
La Kabbale. 3rded. Paris, 1892. 
Granger, F.G. 
The Soul of a Christian. London, 1900. 
Harrison, Jane E. 
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. Cambridge, 1903. 
Hébert, M. | 
La forme idéaliste du sentiment religieux. Paris, 1909. 
Imbert-Gourbeyre, Dr. 
Les Stigmatisées. 2 vols. Paris, 1873. 
La Stigmatization. 2 vols. Paris, 1894. 
James, M. R. 
Apocrypha Anecdota. Series II. Cambridge, 1897. 
James, William. 
The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. London, 1890. 
Textbook of Psychology. London, 1892. 
The Will to Believe. New York, 1897. 
The Varieties of Religious Experience. (Gifford Lectures.) London, 1902. 
A Pluralistic Universe. (Hibbert Lectures.) London, 1909. 
Janet, Pierre. 
L’Automatisme Psychologique. Paris; 1889. 
L’Etat Mentale des Hystériques. 2 vols. Paris, 1893-4. 
Nevroses et idées fixes. Paris, 1898. 
Une extatique (Bulletin de l’Institut Psychologique). Paris, 1gor. 
Obsessions et Psychasthénie. Paris, 1903. 
Translations. The Mental State of Hystericals. New York, Igor. 
The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. New York, 1907. 


582 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Jastrow, J. 
The Subconscious: A Study in Descriptive Psychology. London, 1906. 


Jefferies, Richard. 

The Story of My Heart. 2nded. London, 18or. 
Jundt, A. 

Histoire du panthéisme populaire au moyen Age. Paris, 187§. 
Ladd, G. T. 


An Introduction to Philosophy. London, 1891. 
The Philosophy of Knowledge. New York, 1897. 
.~ The Philosophy of Religion. 2vols. New York, 1905. 
Leroy, B. 
Nature des Hallucinations. (Revue Philosophique, 1907.) 
Interpretation psychologique des Visions Intellectuelles. (Revue de l’Histoire 
des Religions, 1907.) 
Mead, G. R. 8. 
Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis. 
3 vols. London, 1906, 
The Hymn of Jesus. (Echoes from the Gnosis.) London, 1906, 
Munsterberg, Hugo. 
The Eternal Values. London, 1909. 
Murisier, H. 
Les Maladies des Sentiments Religieux. n.d. 
Myers, F. W. H. 
Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. 2 vols. London, 1903. 
Ormond, A. T. 
Foundations of Knowledge. London, 1900. 
Plato. 
Opera, ed. J. Burnet. 5 vols. Oxford, 1899-1907. 
Republic, with Notes and Introduction by J. Adam. Cambridge, 1897. 
Translations. The Dialogues, translated by B. Jowett. 3rd edition. 5 vols. 
Oxford, 1892. 
The Republic, translated by B. Jowett. 3rd edition. Oxford, 1888. 
Prince, Morton. 
The Dissociation of a Personality. New York, 1906. 
Raymond, G. L. 
The Psychology of Inspiration. 1908. 
Rhode, Erwin. Psyche. 2nded. 2vols. Freiburg, 1898. 
Ribot, T. 
Les Maladies de la Mémoire. Paris, 1881. 
Les Maladies de la Volonté. Paris, 1883. 
Les Maladies de la Personnalité. Paris, 1885. 
Psychologie de l’Attention. Paris, 1889. 
Essai sur |’imagination créatrice. Paris, 1900. 
Translations. Diseases of Memory. London, 1882. 
Diseases of the Will. 2nd edition. Chicago, 1896, 
The Diseases of Personality. Chicago, 1891. 
The Psychology of Attention. Chicago, 1890, 
Essay on the Creative Imagination. 1906. 
Rolleston, T. W. 
Parallel Paths: a study in biology, ethics, and art, London, 1908, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 583 


Royce, Josiah. 

Studies of Good and Evil. New York, 1898. 

The World and the Individual. (Gifford Lectures.) 2 vols. London, 1900. 
Schiller, F.C. 8. 

Humanism. London, 1903. 

Plato or Protagoras. Oxford, 1908. 


Schofield, A. T. 
The Unconscious Mind. London, 1899. 
Séglas. 
Phénoménes dits Hallucinations psychiques (Congrés de Psychologie). Paris, 
IgO!. 


Segond, J. La Priére: étude de psychologie religieuse. Paris, 1911. 
Starbuck, E. T. 
The Psychology of Religion. 2nd edition. London, [gol. 


Stewart, J. A. 
The Myths of Plato. London, 1905. 
Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas. London, 1909. 
Taylor, H. 0. 
The Medieval Mind. 2 vols. London, Ig1it. 
Thomas Aquinas, Saint. 
Summa Theologica diligenter emendata. Nicolai, Sylvii, Billuart et Drioux, 
notis ornata. 8vols. Paris, 1880. 
Summa contra Gentiles. Paris, 1877. 
Translations. Compendium of the Summa Theologica, Pars Prima, by B, 
Bonjoannes. Translated by R. R. Carlo Falcini, and revised by Father 
W. Lescher. London, 1905. 
Aquinas Ethicus: Moral teachings of St. Thomas. Translation of the principle 
portion of Pt. II. of Summa Theologica, with notes, by Father J. Rickaby, S.J. 
2 vols. London, 1892. 
Of God and His Creatures: an annotated translation of the Summa Contra 
Gentiles, by Father J. Rickaby, S.J. London, 1905. 
Tulloch, J. 
Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the seventeenth 
century. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1872. 
Yon Hiigel, Baron F. 
Eternal Life. Edinburgh, 1912. 
Waite, A. E. 
The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah. London, 1902. 


Ward, James. ) 
Naturalism and Agnosticism. (Gifford Lectures.) 2 vols. London, 1889. 


Westcott, W. W. 

An Introduction to the Study of the Kabalah. London, 1910. 
Whateley, A. R. 

The Inner Light. London, 1908. 
Whittaker, T. 


The Neoplatonists: a study in the History of Hellenism. Cambridge, 1901. 


584 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


PART IV 


ALCHEMY 


Anonymous. . 
The Hermetic Museum restored and enlarged. Translated by A. E. Waite. 
z2vols. 1893. 
(A reissue of an old collection of alchemic tracts.) 
A Revelation of the Secret Spirit of Alchemy. London, 1523. 
A Short Enquiry Concerning the Hermetic Art. (Reprint.) 1894. 
A Suggestive Enquiry into the Hermetic Mystery. London, 1850. 
(This curious treatise by the late Mrs. Atwood, was suppressed by its author and is 
now scarce.) 
The Turba Philosophorum or Assembly of the Sages. Translated by A. E. 
Waite. London. N.d. 
Ashmole, Elias. 
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652. 
Barrett, F. 
Lives of the Alchemistical Philosophers. 1815. 
(Includes a long bibliography, and translations of numerous alchemic tracts.) 
Figuier, L. 
L’Alchemie et les Alchemistes. Paris, 1856. 
Figulur, B. 
A Golden and Blessed Casket of Nature’s Marvels. Edited by A. E. Waite. 
London. N.d. 
Hitchcock. 
Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists. 1865. 
Kelly, E. 
The Alchemical Writings of. Edited by A. E. Waite. 1893. 
Paracelsus. 
Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of. Edited by A. E. Waite. 2 vols. 1894. 
Philalethes, Eirenaeus (7.c., George Starkey). 
The Marrow of Alchemy. London, 1709. 
Redgroye, Stanley. Alchemy Ancient and Modern. London, IgII. 
Yalentinus. 
The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony. Translated by A. E. Waite. 1893. 
Waite, A. E. 
Azoth, or the Star in the East. London, 1893. 
Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers. London, 1888. (Full bibliography.) 
Willis, T. 
Theophysical Alchemy. London, 1616, 


PART V 


MAGIC 
Hartmann, F. 
Magic, White and Black : or the Science of Finite and Infinite Life. 1904. 
Hermetis Trismegisti. 
Seven Chapters. London, 1692. 


Honorius III. (attributed to). 
Grimoire du Pape Honorius. 1800. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 585 


Léyi, Eliphas. 
Dogme et Rituel dela Haute Magie. 2 vols. 2nd edition. Paris, 1861. 
Histoire de la Magie. Paris, 1860. 
La Clef des Grands Mystéres. Paris, 1861. 
Le Livre des Splendeurs. Paris, 1894. 
Translations. The Mysteries of Magic: a digest of the writings of E. Lévi, by 
A. E. Waite. London, 1886. 
Transcendental Magic. Translated by A. E. Waite. London, 1896. 
The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum. Edited by W. W. Westcott. 
1896. 
Papus. 
Traité Elementaire de Science Occulte. Paris, 1903. 
Qu est-ce que l’occultisme? Paris, 1900. 
L’occultisme et le Spiritualisme. Paris, 1902. 
Pazic, GC. 
Treatyse of Magic incantations. (Reprint.) 18396. 
Sepharial. A Manual of Occultism. London, 1911. 
Steiner, Rudolph. 
The Way of Initiation. Translated from the German by Max Gysi. London, 
1908. 
Initiation and its Results : A Sequel to The Way of Initiation. London, 1909. 
Vaughan, Thomas (Eugenius Philalethes). 
Lumen de Lumine. London, 1651. 
Aula Lucis, or the House of Light. London, 1652. 
Magical Writings. (Reprint.) London and Edinburgh, 1888. 
Venetiana, Antoine. 
Le Grand Grimoire. 1845. 
Waite, A. E. 
The Occult Sciences. London, 1891. 
The Book of Black Magic. Edinburgh, 1898. 
The Book of Ceremonial Magic ; including the Rites and Mysteries of Goetic 
Theurgy and Sorcery, and Infernal Necromancy. London, 1912. 




























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INDEX 


ABSOLUTE, The, 27, 48, 80, 86,97, I10, 
116, 124, 132, 139, 144, 276, 301 seq., 
535 
and mysticism, 28, 44, 50, 126, 129,151, 
461 seg., 537 
and vitalism, 34 
fruition of, 41, 406, 446 
apprehension of, 43, 100, 208, 290 seq., 
362, 451, 464 
search for, 54, 169, 322, 500 
union with, 61, 108, 174, 212, 240, 294, 
371, 480, 534 
man and, 65, 122, 265, 275, 286, 346, 
395 
love of, 85, 103, 287, 399, 415 
immanent, 118, 119, 212, 230 seg. 
and Christianity, 128, 141 seg. 
its desire of man, 158 
awakening to, 205, 279 
and contemplation, 397 
and ecstasy, 447 
Abyss, The, 86, 100, 102, 116, 146, 276, 
308, 385, 400 seg., 404, 411 seg., 423 
480, 508 
Adolescence, 460 
Ain Soph, 116 
Albertus Magnus, 170, 364 
Alchemists, Spiritual, 153, 167 seg., 272 
480, 517, 558 
Alchemy, 122, 168 seg., 464, 500 
Al Ghazzali, 59, 99, 207, 254, 551 
his purgation, 272 
Allegory, 154 seg-, 343, 547 
Ambrose, St., 328 
Anesthesia, 271, 393, 429 
Analogy, 191 
Angela of Foligno, 261, 321, 323, 332 seg , 


her visions, 302, 338 seg., 345, 407, 409 
on contemplation, 418 
Anthony of Padua, St., 321, 346 
Aquinas, see Thomas 
Archetypal World, 186, 315 seg. 
Areopagite, see Dionysius 
Aridity, 290, 457, 467 
Aristotle, 55, 123 
Arius, 126 
d’Ars, Curé, 248 
Art, Function of, 88 seg. 
Artists, 285, 464, 533 
and mystics, 90 
and illumination, 206, 287, 310 
and vision, 325, 342 
and contemplation, 360 
and ecstasy, 464 
Asceticism, 69, 248, 260, 270 seg., 280 
Astral Light, 185 seg. 
Athanasius, St., 502 
Attar, 156, 272, 551 
Atwood, Mrs., 170 
Auditions, 79, 93, 218, 224, 289, 319 seg., 
327 seg., 368, 397, 447, 468 
Augustine, St., 25, 59, 105, III, 117, 120, 
125, 137, 154, 158, 216, 261, 288, 
298, 300, 303, 311, 401, 502 seg., 
545» 559 
on God, 46 
on Trinity, 133 
on Love, 140 
vision, 395 
Automatic composition, 95, 289, 319, 333, 
351 seg. 
examples, 78 seg., 352 seq. 
Automatism, 76, 194, 289, 306, 320 seq., 
468 


35%) 396; 447, 468, 470, 559, 559 seg. | Autoscopes, 19] 


387 


588 


Aziz bin Mahommed Nafasi, 155 
Azoth, 172 


BAKER, Ven. Augustine, 349, 369, 432, 

559 
on coatemplation, 365 
on quiet, 386 
on Dark Night, 461 

Basil the Monk, 172 

Beatific Vision, I15, 157, 229, 236, 400, 
406, 457, 464, 505, 524, 551 

Beauty, 23 seg., 269, 275, 284, 310, 408 

Plato on, 25, 260 
awakening to, 216 
Divine, 237, 347 

Becoming, World of, 42 seg., 87, 118, 
I2I, 232, 267, 281, 286, 399, 365, 
438, 480, 518, 536 seg. 

Being— 

Eckhart on, 5, ITI 

Pure, 47 seg., 87, I17, 120, 122, 130 
seg., 299, 308, 363, 396, 4338, 499, 
543 

Science of, 181 

union with, 380, 412 

world of, 405, 409, 480, 518 

and Becoming, 33, 44, 49,77, 80, 136, 
139, 246, 289, 406 

and Mysticism, 454, 534 

Berger, 106 

Bergson, 31, 34, 36 

Bernard, St., 59, 89, 210, 260, 290, 
396, 495, 546, 548 seg., 559 

on love, 104 

on God, I10, 136, 293 

on Spiritual Marriage, 163 
on ecstasy, 363 

Bernadette of Lourdes, 429 

Betrothal, Spiritual, 164 seg., 280, 
327 

Bhagavad Gita, 186 

Binyon, L., 88 

Birds and Mystics, 312 seq. 

Blake, William, 95, 124, 128, 138, 186, 
‘202, 204, 210, 231, 284, 286, 289, 
305, 308, 311, 320, 334, 351 seg., 
424, 558, 568 

automatic writing, 79 

on art, 88 

on Incarnation, 127 

his illumination, 282 seg. 


388, 


295) 


| 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Blake, William (contd.)— 
on Nature, 310 
his visions, 335 
Blosius, 556 
Blood, B. P., 443 
Boehme, Jacob, 68, I11, I15, 124, 144, 
147, 168, 171 sey., 186, 192, 276, 
281, 286, 290, 311, 316, 367, 415, 
417, 558 seg., 562 
his ecstasy, 69 
on recollection, 77, 374 
on immanence, 120 
on Incarnation, 142 
on New Birth, 148 
his purgation, 273 
illumination, 306 seg. 
automatic composition, 35§ 
on deification, 504 
Bonaventura, St., 127, 148, 157, 549 seq. 
Bossuet, 559 
Bourignan, Antoinette, 259, 366, 560 
her renunciation, 256 
Boutroux, E., 47 
Boyce Gibson, 74, 119, 123 
on Eucken, 40, 64 
Brethren of Free Spirit, 126, 179 
Browne, Sir T., 170, 176, 193 
Browning, 303 
Bucke, R. M., 232, 306 
Bunyan, 155 


CATALEPSY, 429 

Catherine of Alexandria, St., 340 

Catherine of Genoa, St., 93, 95, ICO, 151, 
153, 210, 214, 221, 276, 302, 396, 
474, 522, 550, 556, 560 

her fasts, 71 

on love, IIo 

her conversion, 219, 236 seg. 
purgation, 242, 264, 270 

on Purgatory, 244, 266 

her illumination, 296 seg. 
ecstasies, 432, 435 

on mystic way, 528 seg. 

Catherine of Siena, St., 23, 75, 100, 103, 
I2I, 210, 266, 274, 322, 356, 429, 
432, 447; 450, 475 Ség., 493, 495; 504, 
522, 524, 548, 553, 556 

on union, 45, 436 
her fasts, 71 
mystic marriage of, 95, 327, 348 


INDEX 


Catherine of Siena (contd.)— 
on Incarnation, 143 
mystic life, 211 
on self-knowledge, 241 
her visions, 324, 468 
Dialogue, 352 
ecstasies, 435 seq. 
Catholicism, 558 
and magic, 197 seq. 
Character, 247, 262 
adjustment, 247, 366 
remaking, 261, 455, 473, 498 seg. 
in quiet, 386 
purgation, 463 seq. 
of unitives, 514 seg. 
Chastity, 247, 262 
Christ, 131, 138, 141, 153, 281, 411, 467, 
493 
life of, and mystics, 144, 535 
humanity of, 144, 326, 340 
Eternal, 159 
indwelling, 171 
visions of, 334, 340 Seq. 
Christian mysticism, see Mysticism 
Christian science, 188 
Christianity, 267, 284, 411 
and Mysticism, 125 sey., 535, 543 
and philosophy, 126 seg. 
and magic, 184, 197 
and deification, 501 seg. 
Church, 199 
and magic, 198 
Clairvoyance, 186, 307, 353 
Cleanthes, 127 
Clement of Alexandria, 125, 543 
Cloud of Unknowing, The, 57, 400, 402, 
415 seg., 548 seg., 555 
Cognition, 55, 80 
Columba Rieti, 556 
Common Life, Brotherhood of, 554 
Conation, 55, 80, 375 
Consciousness— 
mystical, twofold, 42 seg., 107, 235, 
259, 273, 289, 402, 4IT, 470, 518 
transcendental, 60 seg., 65, 80, 83, I12, 
256 seg., 290 sez. 355s! 370, 459, 
464, 532 
alteration of, 67, 69, 280, 353 
field of, 67, 70, 80 seg., 108, 213, 393, 
428 
threshold of, 68, 74, 80, 88, 194, 375, 430 


589 


Consciousness (contd.)— 
oscillations of, in mystics, 204 seg, 215, 
273 Seq., 286, 303, 454, 457, 533 
movement of, 205, 315, 357, 454, 461, 
481 
Mystic, its awakening, 213 seg. 
growth, 317 
Cosmic, 232, 306 
unification of, 368, 434, 437 
in introversion, 375 Ség., 379 S€q-, 394, 401 
ecstatic, 442 
Constant, A. L., see Lévi, Eliphas 
Contemplation, 61, 66, 80 seg., 112, I19, 
223, 289, 292, 338, 353, 358 seq., 374, 
393 Seg. 402 Seg., 407 Ség., 427, 440, 
448, 454 seg., 469, 530 
its nature, 59 
its function, 66, 69, 395 
passive, 77 — 
forms of, 109, 393, 400 
stages of, 206, 365 
infused, 204 
an experiment in, 360 seg. 
dark, 397, 413 seg., 421, 457 
marks of, 397 
descriptions of, 400 seg. 
method of 413 seq. 
and ecstasy, 433, 439, 446 
Contemplative— 
life, 155, 204, 238 
state, 157 
experience, 396 
Contemplatives, 209, 518, 543 
Conversion, 80, 194, 213 sey., 276, 279, 
323) 374) 449, 493 
two types of, 235 
Counter-reformation, 557 
Cutten, G. B., 62,71 


DANCE, Mystic, 278, 281 
Dante, 42, 47, 89, 122, 125, 138, 144, 154, 
160, 308, 367, 396, 410, 423, 438, 
440, 493, 497 Seg., SOI Sey., 520, 523, 
539 549, 551 
on emanation, 116 seg. 
and mystic way, 156 seq. 
Purgatorio, 241, 244 seg. 
on Divine Light, 299° 
his vision of God, 301, 406 seg. 
and symbolic vision, 343 
on mystic joy, 524 
A 


590 


Dark Night of Soul, 145, 206, 275, 290, 
371, 453 seg. 480, 497 
mystic aspect of, 462 seg., 472 
Suso and, 482 seg. 
Deification, 119, 122, 166, 207, 212, 452, 
479, 496 seq. 
Deified man, 174, 176 
Delacroix, 17, 291, 347, 369, 498, 501 
on mystics, 75, 208 
on St. Teresa, 130 
on automatism, 327 
on contemplation, 394 
Denis the Carthusian, 276, 435, 554, 556 
Detachment, 155, 247 s¢g., 475 seq. 
Devotion, 155 
Dialogue, mystical, 289, 319, 322 seq. 
Dionysius the Areopagite, 54, 77, 94, 116, 
12%, \125;'\ 1574 208,9227.)/203,\; 380, 
383; 403, $45, 550 554 seg. 
on surrender, I10 
on ignorance, III 
on Divine Love, 238 
on Divine Dark, 301, 413 seq. 
on contemplation, 398 
Disintegrated Personality, se¢ Personality 
Dissociation, Mental, 333 
Divine Absence, see God, Absence of 
Divine Dark, 86, 117, 157, 208, 301, 380, 
400 seg., 414, 422, 425, 546 
its meaning, 415 
Divine Fecundity, 166, 207, 209, 512 seg., 
538 
examples of, 516 
Divine Humanity, 463 seg., 474, 538 
Divine Ignorance, see Ignorance 
Divine Principle, 120 
Divine Union, see Union 
Douceline, St., 260, 549 
Driesch, Hans, 31 


EBNER, Margaret, 323, 554 
Eckartshausen, C. von, 147, 561 
Eckhart, 6, 38, 77, 98, 158, 162, 210, 227, 
276, 306, 364, 373, 380 seg., 410, 465, 
551 seg. 
on Being, 5, I11 
on silence, 45, 77 
on immanence, I2I 
on Holy Spirit, 140 
on Eternal Birth, 146 
on purity, 248 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Eckhart (contd. )— 
on detachment, 252 
on union, 441 
on deification, 502 
Ecstasy, 38, 67 seg., 72 seg., 96, 112, 153, 
157s 194, 275; 292, 337; 358, 363, 393, 
425» 427 Séq-y 454, 457, 544 
creative, 76 
function of, 129, 452 
and union, 207 
examples, 226, 229, 432 seq. 
and purgation, 272 seg. 
its psychology, 431 seq. 
and mysticism, 438 seg. 
and contemplation, 446 
dark, 471 
Ecstatics, 440 
Elizabeth of Schoenau, 548 
Emanation, 116 seg. 
psychology and, 118 
and immanence, 123 seq. 
Emotion, 53, 57 
conative, 55 
and symbolism, 151 
and mysticism, 161 
and contemplation, 400 
Entelechy, 46 
Epistle of Discretion, 102 
of Private Counsel, 382 
of Prayer, 511 
Erigena, John Scotus, 133, 311, 316 546 
Eucken, Rudolph, 31, 41, 64, 66, 135, 
136, 148, 236, 496, 498, 5o1 
on Reality, 24, 40 
on spiritual life, 39, 64 
Euripides, 284 
Evocation, 189, 194 


FAITH and life, 18 
Fasting, 71, 242 
Father, The, 48, 130, 138 seg., 364, 406 
Feeling— 
thought and will, 80, 371, 394, 523 
and mysticism, 85, 400 seqg., 438 
Fénelon, 559 
Field of Consciousness, see Conscious- 
ness 
Fire, Mystic, 33, 137, 148, 168, 228, 266, 
277, 308, 503 
of Love, see Love 
Flowers, Mystics and, 260, 306 


INDEX 


Fox, George, 210, 214 seg., 273, 286, 306, 
495, 557 seq. 
his illumination, 309 
Francis of Assisi, St., 92, 210, 236, 248, 
254, 256, 260, 285, 288, 290, 320 seg. 
331 5€9-, 435, 514, 517, 523 seg-, 549, 
556 
his character and conversion, 217 
on poverty, 251 
purgation, 269 
and animals, 311 seg. 
stigmata, 320, 348, 447 
his joy, 526 seg. 
Francis de Sales, St., 221, 471, 559 
Francis Xavier, St., 267 
Franck, Sebastian, 356 
Fraticelli, 126 
Freedom, 31, 34 seg., 155, 239, 250, 
275, 280, 335, 359, 366, 392 Scq:, 
426, 438, 443, 483, 497 seg., 524, 
532 seg., 536 
Freyer, D. A., 561 
Friends of God, 223, 441, 491, 517, 553 
Fruition, 41, 53, 210, 412, 425 seg., 446, 
499 Seq, 519 seq. 
Fiinklein, 64 


GAME of Love, see Love 
Gardner, Edmund, 71, 322, 352 
Gemiith, 64 
Genius, 75 seg., 78, 453 
and mysticism, 78, 87, 280 
spiritual, 124, 127, 214, 283, 366, 448, 
515 
and ecstasy, 437 
Gertrude, St., 409, 465, 548, 551 
Gertrude, Nun, 546 
Gichtel, John, 561 
Gnosticism, 69, 126, 179, 184, 186, 543 
God, 116, 126, 129, 286, 395, 407, 501, 
535 
union with, see Union 
love of, see Love 
as Being, 44, 48, 152, 402 
mystics and, 46, 134 seg., 229 
knowledge of, 57, 100 seg., 155, 441 seq. 
transcendent, 116 seg., 123, 235, 302, 
402, 411, 415 
immanent, 118 seg., 124, 152, 316, 408 seq. 
names of, 124, 127, 198 
needs man, 158 seg., 161, 508 


591 


God (contd.)— 
absence of, 206, 449, 464 $€]., 470 Séq., 
490 
absorption in, 207 
presence of, 222, 288, 290 seg., 339, 376, 
456 seq. 
glory of, 232 
craving for, 299, 318 
in quiet, 382 
sons of, 519 
Godfernaux, 53, 89, 323, 431 
Godhead, Unconditioned, 48, tat, 4132, 
144, 157, 208, 411, 413, 519, 521 
vision of, 131, 406 
aspects of, 132 seg., 402 
emanations of, 315 
desert of, 364, 403, 406 
and God, 410 
Ruysbroeck on, 412 
seé also Abyss and Absolute 
Grail, quest of, 154 
Granger, F., 320 
Gravitation, spiritual, 158, 162 
Green lion, 174, 272 
Gregory of Nyssa, 125, 316 
Gregory the Great, 546 
Groot, Gerard, 554 
Ground of Soul, see Soul 
Guyon, Madame, 109, 214, 237, 274, 286, 
296, 351, 385, 465 SEQ) 475) 479 Sq, 
487, 493, 559 seg., 562 
on contemplation, 77, 389 
automatic writing, 78, 353 seg. 
youth and conversion, 220 SEG. 
and St. Catherine of Genoa, 221 
purgation, 270 seq. 
on visions and voices, 328, 337 
dark night, 457 seg. 
on union, 515 


HAFIZ, 551 

Hall, Bishop, 559 

Hazlitt, 193 

Heart, 85, 112, 151, 338, 464 
reality known of, 57, 292 
and mysticism, 106, 371, 523 

Heat, mystic, 233 

Hébert, M., 91 

Hegel on beauty, 24 

Helfde, 548 


| Henry of Nordlingen, 554 


592 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Heracleitus, 12, 45, 127, 139, 286 Incarnation, The, 127 seg., 141 seg., 424 
and vitalism, 32, 34 seg. and deification, 502 
Hermes Trismegistus, 170, 184, I91 Independent spiritual life, 39, 66, 397, 
Hermetic art, see Alchemy 536 
books, 28, 184 spiritual world, 27, 205 
science, 183 seq. Indifference, 248, 268 seg., 386, 389 seq., 493 
Hervey, Christopher, 135 Inge, Dr. W. R., 64 
Higher Thought, see New Thought Initiation, 187 seg. 
Hildegarde, St., 74, 138, 299, 548 Inspiration, 76, 282, 351, 358 


Hilton, Walter, 60, 104, 158, 161, 241, | Intellect, 53 seg. 
265, 317, 386, 397, 408 seg., 415 seq., Bergson’s theory of, 36 


479, 512, 555 darkness of, 460 seg. 

on pilgrimage, 154 satisfaction of, 523 

on presence of God, 291 Introversion, 119, 300, 362 seg., 522 

on automatisms, 335 Intuition, 39, 76, 155, 311, 329 seg., 366, 433 

on contemplation, 367 seg., 399 Irenzeus, 125 
Holland, B., 140 
Holy Spirit, 131, 139 seg. JACOPONE da Todi, 145, 210, 264, 299, 549 
‘* Hound of Heaven,”’ 161 on poverty, 250 
Hugh of St. Victor, 154, 369, 546 on ecstasy, 446 seg. 

on music, 9I Jacques of la Massa, 285 

on contemplation, 109, 294 Jalalu ’d Din, 38, 104, 160, 415,464, 509, 551 
Humanity, path of, 490 James, William, 8 seg., 118 


Humility, 241, 253, 266, 274, 302 seg., on mysticism, 96, 396 

379, 403, 415, 478, 530 | Jamf, 97, 151, 551 
Huysmans, J. K., 267, 325 i Janet, Pierre, 71 seg., 320 
Hymn of Jesus, 159, 281, 543 | Jeanne Frangoise de Chantal, St., 221, 456, 
Hypnotic states, 69 seg. 559 
Hysteria and mystics, 70, 72, 430 | [efferies, Richard, 232, 236 

| Anes St., 15 

(DEALISM, 13 seq. | Jerusalem, 148, 154, 399 
(gnatius Loyola, St., 210, 495, 514, 517, | Joan of Arc, Blessed, 210, 331, 495, 514, 


523, 557 556 
his lucidity, 69 John, St., Gospel of, 300, 543 
mortifications, 271 John of Parma, 285 
visions, 326 [546 | John of the Cross, St., 94, 107, 110, 166, 
Ignorance, Divine, 111, 381, 402, 406, 415, 196, 210, 245, 265, 276, 418, 423, 
Illumination, State of, 155 seg., 166, 206, 463, 481, 487, 527, 557 | 


231 seg., 249, 257, 274 Seg., 279 Seq., poems quoted, 99, 284, 420, 442 
371, 406, 454 seg-, 457, 463, 470, 473 on detachment, 249, 255 


and alchemy, 173 on attachments, 256 

its nature, 240, 298 on automatisms, 329 seg., 336 

characteristics, 282, 288 on dark contemplation, 421 

transcendental, 300 seg. on Dark Night, 465, 467, 477 
Illuminative Way, see Illumination Jones, Rufus, 115, 223 seg., 320 


Immanence, 42, 48, 116, 118 seg., 124, | Joy, Mystic, 229, 287, 304, 408, 423, 493, _ 


129, 289, 300 
psychology and, 119 
consciousness of, 216, 231, 237, 282, 3090, 
339, 408 seg. 332, 361, 363 seg., 435, 555 
See also Absolute and God on Trinity, 133 seq. A 


523 Seg. 


) 
| 
} 
| 
| 
| 


Julian of Norwich, 43, 81, 107, 121, 159, 
244, 288, 290, 297, 302 Seg., 310, 322, | 





INDEX 598 


Julian of Norwich (contd.j— Love (contd.)— 
on Incarnation, 143 mystic, 58, 84 seg., 87, 92, 96, 101 seg., 
visions, 324 f IIO seg., 152, 236, 251, 317 seg., 336, 
Jundt, A., 224 372, 396, 410, 424, 464, SIO seg., 
523 
KABALAH, the, 184, 186, 192 of God, 81, 85, 97, 102, 219, 230, 269, 
Kabalists, 76, 115 seg., 123, 129, 315 445, 496 
seq. divine, 124, 237 
Kant, 70, 360 as Holy Spirit, 139 seg. 
Kempe, Margery, 270, 554 symbols of, 153, 162 seg. 
Knowledge, 52 seg. mutual, 155, 158 
desire of, 52 seg., 85, 107, 180 following, 161 seg. 
by union, 81, 100 Four Degrees of, 165, 369, 376, 379, 391, 
renouncement of, III 452 
transcendental, 322, 361, 394, 399 Fire of, 228, 237, 500 
law of, 408, 533 as reality, 242 
and ecstasy, 441, 449 game of, 274, 343, 457 


pure, 276, 297, 373, 389, 396, 480, 493 
LAW, William, 61, 168, 299, 316, 474, 558, vision of, 334 


561 in orison, 366, 374, 395 
on Trinity, 137 language of, 509 
Lawrence, Brother, 228, 235, 289, 295, and fruition, 521 seg. 
303, 560 law of, 535 
character and conversion, 230 wine-press of, 562 
Lead, Jane, 147, 559, 562 Lucia of Narni, 556 
Leuba, 56 Lucidity, Mystic, 69 seg., 214, 286, 305 - 
on mystics, 109 seg., 112 $€]+ 309, 429, 433, 456, 466 
Lévi, Eliphas, 184 seg., 193 seg. Luis de Leon, 258 
Levitation, 224, 449 seq. Lydwine of Schiedam, St., 267, 556 
Liberty, see Freedom visions, 325 
Life 
and vitalism, 34 seq. 
transcendent, 64, 138, 537 Macarius of Egypt, St., 546 
enhancement of, 88, 96, 111, 208 283, | Machen, Arthur, 62 
395» 432, 451, 496, 513 seg. Maeterlinck, M., 405 
of the All, 232, 281, 361, 437 Magdalena dei Pazzi, St., 267 
Absolute, 283, 311, 373, 379, 481 Magic, 83 seg., 97, 100, 178 seg., 190 
and rhythm, 334 and religion, 182 
mystic and, 535 and psychology, 189 seg. 
Light, Inward, 120, 421 therapeutics, 195 
uncreated, 86, 137, 287, 368, 408, 504 and suffering, 196 
mystic, 216, 298 seg., 347 and Christianity, 197 
Light, life, and love, 132, 229, 287, 407 education, 316 
Liturgies, 189 seq. Magnum Opus, see Alchemy 
Logos, 33 seg., 45, 131 seg., 138 seg., 142, | Magus, 171 
159, 281, 328 Malaval, 65, 305, 431, 561 
Love— Man and reality, 40, 43 
Spirit of, see Holy Spirit and alchemy, 171 
and pain, 22, 266 seg. Mantra, 189 
desire of, 52 seg., 85 Margaret Mary, St., 321 
active, 55 seg., 102 Marriage of soul, see Spiritual Marriage 


QQ 


594 


Martinists, 185 
Maury, 433 
Mead, G. R. S., 159 
Mechthild of Hackborn, St., 37, 236, 548 
visions, 344 
Mechthild of Magdeburg, 99, 107, 127, 
161, 210, 248 seg., 286, 288, 299 sez., 
333 Seg-, 409, 470, 503, 548 
on mystic pain, 73 
on love, 110 
on orison, 410 
Meditation, 58, 189, 372, 375 seg-, 387, 
390 
Mediums, 79, 352 seg., 430 
Mental Healing, 189, 195 
Menticulture, 183, 188 
Mercury of the Wise, 172 
Merswin, Rulman, 116, 214, 235 seg., 243; 
3525 449 seg.» 457, 470, 480, 554 
his Vision of Nine Rocks, 118, 157, 246, 
343) 441 
conversion, 223 
psychology, 224 
penances, 274 
Metapsychic phenomena, 187 
Microcosm, 118, 122, I91 
Mirror of St. Edmund, 366 
Mirror of Sitaple Souls, 89, 263, 403, 408, 
473) 497, 510, 523, 550 
Missal, 142, 198, 328 
Molinos, 387, 560 
Monet, 315 
Monoideism, 70, 72, 296, 433, 437, 446 
More, Gertrude, 71, 92, 105 seg., 153, 208, 
558 
Mortification, 205, 225, 242, 247, 261 seg., 
280, 474 
Music and Mysticism, 90 seg., 321, 401, 
555 
Myers, F., 428 
Mysteries, The, 183, 188, 283, 543 
Orphic, 28, 509, 543 
Dionysiac, 69, 284, 428 
Mystic— 
marriage, see Spiritual 
philosophy, see Philosophy 
vision, 42 seg., 160 
type, 58, 108, 268, 273, 275 
sense, 59 seg., 63 seg. 
feeling, 87 
literature, 95, 288, 396, 547 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Mystic (contd.)— 
experience, 108, 303, 401 
education, 109, 358 seg., 370 
life process, 109, 371 
quest, III, 123, 153 seg. 
theology, 139, seg. 
death, 206, 457, 466, 480 
life, first, 206, 275, 286, 358, 371, 454 
life, second, 275, 454, 483 
language, 400 
development, 454 seq. 
heritage, 518 
Mystic Way, 96, 98, 108, 112, 152, 203, 
212, 365, 455, 498, 510 seg., 518, 528 
. 5€G.y 534 Seq. 
and life of Christ, 145 
and alchemy, 173 
stages of, 204 seg. 
end of, 530 
Mystic, The, see also Mystics 
his mechanism, 58 seg. 
as genius, 78, 461 
defined, 89 seg. 
his states, 204 
great, mark of, 211 
and visions and voices, 321 seg., 335 
and artistic expression, 326 seg. 
and orison, 388, 394 seg. 
and ecstasy, 442 seq. 
and Dark Night, 462 seg., 472 
mature, 518 
Mysticism— 
its doctrines, 27, 112, 122 
and vitalism, 41 
its nature, 84 seg., 96 seg., 106 se€g., 109, 
Ir 
and music, see Music 
and symbols, 94, 149 seg. 
defined, 97 
love and, IOI seq. 
its branches, 112 
and religion, 115, 125 seg. 
and theology, 118, 121 seg., 128 seg. 
its valid part, 122 
and analogy, 123 
theurgic, 180 
and magic, 197 
Christian, 208, 211, 282, 364, 375, 386, 
410, 435, 480, 501 
and goodness, 241 
its vice, 385 


INDEX 


Mysticism (contd.)— 

its meaning, 531 

curve of, 541 seg. 

tradition of, 542, 559 

Indian, 37, 69, 189, 207, 375, 428, 520 

European, 208, 520 

German, 473, 475, 548, 551 

Medieval, 547 

Italian, 549 seg. 

Franciscan, 549 seg. 

Dominican, 549 seg. 

Mahommedan, see Sifis 

English, 554 

Flemish, §54 

Spanish, 557 

Mystics, The, 28, 41, 44, 48, 58, 60, 

112, I15, 124, 199, 285, 410 

their claim, 4, 26 seg. 

and artists, 41, 89 seg., 268, 325 

practical, 70, 122, 295 seg., 310, 414, 
495 

psycho-physical peculiarities, 70 seg., 
434 

their wholeness of life, 75 

automatic powers, 78 

as lovers, 106, 512 

heroic types, 109 seg., 512 

and theology, 116 seg., 132, 136 

and occultists, 187 

as actives, 209 seg., 512 seq. 

Christian, see Mysticism 

their love of nature, 249, 312 

and Unitive Life, 496 seg. 

two types of, 496 

Unitive, 514 seq. 

and humanity, 534 


NAMES of God, see God 
Nativity, The, and Mysticism, 142, 146 
Naturalism, 10 
Nature— 
and Christ, 138 
mystic vision of, 216, 231 seg., 282, 289, 
304 
mystics and, 249, 310 seg., 456 
contemplation of, 360 seg. 
Negation, 380, 402 seg., 410, 421 seg., 444, 
462 
Negative states, 455 s¢g., 468, 471 
Neoplatonic theology, 125 
Mysticism, 398 


595 


Neoplatonists, 115, 117, 126, 130, 179, 
272, 380, 402, 428, 444, 509, 543 seg., 
559 

their Trinity, 132 

New Birth, 40, 63, 66, 146 seg., 167, 233, 
362, 381, 501, 532, 543, 558 

New Man, 169, 261, 277, 311, 318, 370, 
481 

New Testament, 199 

New Thought, 84, 183, 188 seg. 

Nicholas of Basle, 554 

Nirvana, 207 

Norris, John, 559 


OBEDIENCE, 247, 260 
Occult, see Magic 
Odes of Solomon, 543 
Odic force, 186 
One, The, 48, 96, 115, 17, 122, 129, 130, 
136, 166, 250, 256, 276, 367, 396, 
403, 410 S€q., 413, 444, 543, 544 
Dante’s vision of, 406 
One Act, the, 388 seg. 
Origen, 546 
Orison, 223, 292, 305, 337, 366 seg., 410, 
448, 454, 457, 560 
of quiet, see Quiet 
of union, see Union 
Degrees of, 109, 206, 366 seg. 
naked, 368, 380 seg. 
ideal of, 389 
Ormond, A. T., 512 
Osanna Andreasi, 556 
Oxyrhynchus Papyri, 121 


PACHEU, J., 109 
Pain, 21, 196, 493 
and love, 22, 266 seg. 
mystic states of, 204 seg., 464, 482 
of God, 471 
Pantheism, 119 
Papus, 180 
Paracelsus, 179, 356 
Pascal, 440, 449, 452, 560 
memorial of, 228 
Passivity, 60, 77, 96, 221, 296, 366, 384, 
389, 445 
Pathology and mysticisrn, 71 seg., 430 
Patmore, Coventry, 29, 160, 170, 372, 525 
530 


on Incarnation, 14! 


596 


Patmore, Coventry (conta.)— 
on Church, 199 
on Reality, 240, 503 
Paul, St., 70, 119, 240, 320, 439, 513, 517, 
523, 543 
on Trinity, 136 
conversion of, 216 
Pelagius, 126 
Cersonality— 
divine, 50, 60, 126, 142, 153, 346, 402, 
407, 413, 506 
sub-conscious, see Subliminal 
remaking of, 64, 448, 481, 498 seg. 
levels of, 394 
and deification, 503 
Peter of Alcantara, St., 557 
Petersen, Gerlac., 99, 242, 255, 511, 556 
Philadelphians, 559 seg. 
Philip of the Trinity, 329 
Philo, 76, 115, 543 
Philosopher’s Stone, 169 seg., 464, 500, 517 
Philosophy, 5 ség., 315, 399 
' -vitalistic, 31 seg., 186, 518 
activistic, 39 
transcendental, 85 
mystical, 98, 114, 118, 124, 128 
Christian, 126 
Hermetic, 167, 316 
occult, 183 seg. 
Pilgrimage of soul, 118, 153 seg. 
Plato, 6, 47, 121, 123, 205, 240, 282, 286, 
292, 315; 445 
on beauty, 25, 260, 283 
on mystic sense, 59 
on contemplation, 365 
Platonism and mysticism, 98 
Platonists, Cambridge, 86, 559 
Pleasure, States of, 204 seg., 227, 290 
and pain, 275, 454, 457, 470 
Plotinus, 111, 115, 122, 127, 209, 216, 250, 
276, 281, 315, 325, 396, 400, 440, 447, 
DAS: 
on mystic sense, 59 
ecstasy, 98, 444 
union, IOI, 398 
immanence, I19 
Poetry, 333, 343, 420 
Poets, 280, 285, 395, 448 
and illumination, 232, 282 
mystical, 306, 456 
Poiret, P., 561 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM } 


Pordage, Dr., 559, 562 
Porphyry, 544 
Poverty, 247 seg., 265, 478 
Prayer, see Orison 
Presence of God, see God 
Prince, Morton, 68 
Proclus, 545 
Prophecy, 186, 333, 353, 437 
Prophets, 334, 448 
Psychology, 50, 53 seg. 
of mystic way, 109, 123, 203 seg. 
and magic, 189 seg., 194 
and automatisms, 320 seg. 
of contemplation, 394, 402, 419 
of ecstasy, 431 seg. 
of Dark Night, 455 seg. 
of Unitive Life, 498 seg. 
Purgation, 156, 175, 205, 215, 239 seg., 
279, 283, 289, 303, 371, 455, 463 seg. 
466, 473 
factors of, 275 seq. 
and illumination, 276 seg. 
passive, 463, 477 
of spirit, 474 
Purgatory, 244, 266 
Purification, see Purgation 


QUIA amore langueo, 162 

Quakers, 120, 126, 553, 558 

Quiet, Orison of, 99, 209, 221 seg., 340, 
369 se7., 377 SeY-, 393, 397, 403, 410, 
434, 440 

Quietism, 384 seg. 

Quietists, 81, 126, 179, 296, 558 seg. 


RAPTURE, 292, 298, 337, 363, 366, 393, 
429, 440, 448 seg. 
dark, 471 
Rationalists, 320 
Realism, 10 
Reality, 10 seg., 42 seg-, 376 
philosophy and, 10 seg., 35, 40 
beauty and, 25 seg. 
mystics and, 28, 42, 49, 81, III seg., 
212, 240, 326, 394, 400, 406, 463, 
499 Séq., 503, 519, 523 Seg. 
levels of, 40, 66, 77, 205, 280 
dual nature of, 42 seg., 289, 410, 518 seg. 
negative descriptions, 50, 402, 411 
condition of knowing, 51, 56 seg., 212, 
473, 496, 532 


INDEX 


Reality (contd.)— 
our link with, 66 
and ecstasy, 73, 226, 228, 439, 441 
transcendent, 87, 289, 301 seg. 
and art, 88 seg. 
and symbols, 93 seg., 343 
self’s movement to, 97, 153 seq 
concepts of, 116, 137, 153, 235, 50% 
and immanence, 118, 289, 300 
and theology, 121, 139, 145 
craving for, 242, 471 
of phenomena, 307 seg. 
Reason, see Intellect 
Re-birth, see New Birth 
Récéjac, 19, 158, 265, 292, 392 
on beauty, 24 
on mysticism, 55, 97, 103, 314, 335 
Receptivity, 76 seg., 378 seq. 
Recollection, 58, 369 seg., 374 seg., 392 
Red Dragon, 176 
Regeneration, 147, 153, 499 
symbols of, 167 seg. 
Religion, 20, 56, 193 
and mysticism, 115 
and magic, 182, 189 seg., 197 
Repairer, The, 144 
Rhythm, 90, 91, 94 seg., 150, 189 seg., 
197, 281, 287, 333 seg. 
and ecstasy, 69 
of consciousness, 216 
Ribet, 321 
Ribot, 71, 433, 443 
Richard of St. Victor, 165, 246, 369, 442, 
447, 513, 516, 546, 548, 554 
degrees of love, 165, 350, 372, 376, 391 
on ecstasy, 452 
- on deification, 504 
Rolle, Richard, 109, 237, 243, 248, 254, 
285 seq., 288, 332, 379, 423, 440, 548, 
554 Seq. 
on song, 92 seg., 234, 290, 526 
on mystic love, 102 
on Heat Sweetness, Song, 233 
his conversion, 234 
on illumination, 317 
on contemplation, 401, 408 
on joy, 525 seg. 
Romance, 89, 91, 535 
Rose of Lima, St., 313 seqg., 527, 558 
Rosicrucians, 179, 558 
Royce, Josiah, 27, 153. 


597 


Rutherford, Samuel, 378 
Ruysbroeck, 61, 91, 108, 155, 158, 210. 
253, 276, 364, 396, 446, 489, 502 sev. 
508 seg., 522, 524, 554, 556 
on God, 42, 44, 138 seq., 521 
on emotion, 57 
on union, 102, 373, 505, 521 
on introversion, 119 
on Trinity, 140 
on Birth of Son, 142, 146 
on love of God, 318, 424 
on Quietism, 385 
on dual life, 388, 521 
on contemplation, 398, 411 
on Dark Night, 467 
on Unitive Life, 505 seg. 
on divine sonship, 519 


SACRAMENTS— 
and Magic, 197 
and Mystics, 435 
Sacred Heart, Vision of, 95 
Sacrum Commercium, 251 
Sadi, 551 
Saint-Martin, 8, 96, 144, 147, 558 seq., 
562 
Sanctity, 152, 466 
Scepticism, Philosophic, 15 
School of Holy Spirit, 483 seg. 
Science, 399 
and life, 19 
Self— 
and world, 6, 276 
the, its three activities, 53 seg., 100, 371, 
394, 523 
its machinery, 53 seg. 
its dual nature, 61 seg., 67, 76, 240, 257, 
289, 361, 370 seg., 518 seg. 
surrender of, see Surrender 
and Reality, 81, 88, 97, 122, 161, 364, 
373> 379, 518 
loss of, 100, 402, 405, 411, 480, 520 
transmutation of, 108, 167 seg., 262, 464, 
474, 481, 496 seg., 500 seg. 
journey of, 117 
cravings of, 151 
annihilation of, 157, 207, 474, 478 seq., 
501, 520 
suggestion, I9I, 194 
awakening of, 205, 213 seg., 240 
conversion of, see Conversion 


598 


Self (contd. )\— 
knowledge, 241 seg., 280 
conquest, 242 
illumination of, 287 
education of, 372 
mergence, 373, 397, 409, 446 
naughting, 379, 477 seg. 
508 
in contemplation, 394 
in Dark Night, 460 seg. 
love, 476 
Selfhood, 246 
death of, 266, 317, 478, 493, 520 
Senses— 
world of, 6 
death of, 265 
night of, 286 
and automatism, 321 
hallucinations of, 322,. 329, 334 
imagery of, 368 
** Seven Valleys, The,”’ 156 
Shelley, 93 
Silence, Interior, see Quiet 
Simeon Metaphrastes, 502 
Sin, 240 seg., 264, 462 
conviction of, 466 
Smith, John, 559 
Solitude, 210, 242, 387 
Son, The, 138, 144 
Eternal Birth of, 146 
Marriage with, 364 
Sonship, Divine, 534 
Song, Mystic, 93, 234, 290, 322, 526 seg. 
Song of Solomon, 163, 300, 445, 509 
Sophia, 147, 277, 280 
Soul, ror, 111, 118, 164 
apex of, 64 
ground of, 64, 119 seg., 123, 280, 364, 
373» 380, 404, 409, 411, 417, 466, 479 
spark of, 64, 66, 87, 120, 129, 173, 277, 
311, 329, 357, 364, 437, 466, 474, 481, 
532 
Space and Time, 14 
Spark of Soul, see Soul 
Spiritual Marriage, 95, 109, 153, 163 seg., 
269, 361, 391, 424, 445, 496 seg., 509, 
512 seg., 543 
ornaments of, 108 
of St. Catherine, 211, 349, 356 
Starbuck, 70, 209, 455 
on conversion, 214, 231 


497, 595, 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


| Steiner, R., 180, 183, 187, 195, 231, 316 
Stewart, J. A., 65, 87 
Stigmatisation, 71, 320, 447 
Subliminal Mind, 62 seg., 74, 108, 123, 
130, 328, 366, 372, 448, 468 
in mystics, 69, 79 
and visions, 348 
Substance and Existence, 40 
Siifis, 76, 95, 99, 109, 115, 129, 151, 155, 
207, 254, 272, 500, 551 
“‘ Suggestive Enquiry, A,” 170, 174 
Surrender, 81, 110, 161, 206, 210, 224, 
229, 254, 269, 284, 293, 341, 368, 
371 seg-, 379, 386, 389 seg., 405, 414 
S€]+, 424, 469 Seq-, 475 seqg., 481, 493; 
497, 533, 501 
Suso, 109, 122, 209 ség., 223, 235 s¢q., 243, 
248, 263, 267 seg., 276, 286 seg., 306, 
321, 325 seg., 331 seg. 340, 348, 409, 
443, 447 seq., 463, 470, 473, 553 
on theology, 117, 141 
his conversion, 225 
temperament, 225, 487 seg. 
visions, 226, 342 seq., 483 seg. 
illumination, 303 
his Dark Night, 460, 482 seg. 
and the Knight, 488 
and the baby, 490 seg. 
on union, 507 
Swedenborg, 192, 562 
Symbolism, 93 seg., 112, 149 seg., 190, 325 
Symbols, 121, 189, 282, 288, 322, 339, 377 
393, 401, 429 
of the Absolute, 136, 152, 396 
three classes of, 151 
of quest, 153 seg. 
of love, 153,°162 seg. 
of transmutation, 153, 167 seg., 501 
of pilgrimage, 154 seg. 
of marriage, 163 seg., 509 
magic, 191 
philosophic, 407 
and ecstasy, 434 seg. 
of Unitive Life, 496 seg., 511 seq. 
of deification, 503 
Symons, Arthur, 99, 107, 284, 420 
Syntagma, go 
Synteresis, 64, 173 


TAULER, 66, 73, 104, 120 seg., 138, 210, 
223, 318, 323, 333, 395, 470, 473, 552s 


-_ ~ 





INDEX 


Tauler (comtd.)— 
on self loss, 106, 478 
on poverty, 259 
on mortification, 262 
on pain, 267 
on desert of God, 364 
on Abyss, 404 
Telepathy, 187, 353 
Tennyson, 286, 305 
Teresa, St., 70, 94, 105, 109, 115, 120, 
123, 140, 205, 207, 209 seg., 243, 261, 
267, 274, 286, 290 seg., 296 seq., 320 
5€G+y 323» 326, 333 Seg-, 339 Seg., 374: 
380, 390, 409, 431, 447, 469 seg., 482, 
495» 515, 517, 523, 527; 542, 553, 557, 
560, 562 
on ecstasy, 73, 429, 439, 443 
Spiritual Marriage, 95, 165 
on Trinity, 130 seg. 
her character, 257 seq. 
purgation, 258 seg. 
visions, 324, 340 seg., 346 seg. 
on auditions, 329 seg. 
her transverberation, 350 
automatic writing, 352 seq. 
on orison, 369, 372, 425 seg. 
on recollection, 377 
on quiet, 333, 390 
on rapture, 393, 433, 449 seq. 
on levitation, 449 seg. 
on pain of God, 471 
Téwekkul Bég, 119 
Theologia Germanica, 59, 66, 99, 145, 151, 
167, 242, 277, 294, 508, 553 
on detachment, 249 
on deification, 500 
Theology, 125 seg., 148 
Theopathetic state, 157, 212 
life, 517, 522 
mystics, 514 
Theories of Being, 9 seg., 30 
Thomas 4 Kempis, 23, 261, 287, 333, 383, 
74, 554, 559 
ieedl 
Chomas Aquinas, St., F9, 47, 59, 77, 139, 
On Gahanation, 
on immanencc, 
on Trinity, 133 
on Holy Spirit, 140 
on Beatific Vision, 229, 506 


595 


Thompson, Francis, 161 
Three Principles, 173, 176 
Threshold of Consciousness, see Conscious- 
Ness | 
Towne, E., 188 
Tradition, 359, 542, 559 
Traherne, Thomas, 559 
Trance, Ecstatic, 207 seg., 306, 352, 425, 
428 seqg., 439, 448 seg. 
Transcendence, 41, 108, 116 sez., 123, 129, 
213, 245, 267, 280, 311, 367, 388, 400, 
500, 532 Seg. 
and immanence, 49, 300, 402 
symbols of, 151 seg. 
process of, 205, 239 
vision of, 235 
contemplation of, 402, 411 seq. 
dark, 423 
and ecstasy, 436 
Transcendental Consciousness, see Con- 
sciousness 
feeling, 65 seqg., 87, 280, 396 
sense, 68 seg., 84 
powers, 75 
life, 204 
world, 311 
Transmutation, see Self and Symbols 
Tree of Life, 117, 123, 315 
Trees and Mystics, 230 seg. 
Trinity, Christian, 126 seg., 308, 410 seg., 
505, 521 
Hindu, 132 
Vision of, 326, 334 
Tyrrell, G., 98 


UNIFICATION, 64, 130, 245, 287, 498, 520 
of consciousness, 81, 434, 442 
Union, Mystic, 28, 38, 42 seg., 48, 81y 85 
$€]-, 90, 94, 96, 100 seg., 106, 120, 
I5I, 159 Seg.) 174, 205, 336 seg., 240, 
350; 359; 371, 373, 389, 403 seg., 424, 
439, 444, 451, 474, 480, 499 seq., 505, 
508 seq. 515» 534s 544 
active, I25 
hypostatic, 143 
condition of, 246, 367 
orison of, 294, 340, 369 scg., 393, 409, 
413, 424 seq., 438 
passive, 371, 398 
St. Teresa on, 426 
ecstatic, 442 


600 — 


Unitive Life, 68, 96, 145, 348, 463, 480, 
494 seq., 510 seq. 
and illumination, 294 seg. 
examples of, 514 
dual character of, 518 seg. 
its gaiety, 527 
Unitive Way, 156, 166, 207, 233, 275, 371, 
454, 493, 515 
Unity, 129, 131, 157, 309, 505 
Universe, dynamic, 121 


VAUGHAN, H. (Silurist), 305, 414, 489, 559 
Vaughan, R. A., 180 
Vaughan, Thomas, 559 
Vernazza, Ven. Battista, 138, 424, 556 
Vincent de Paul, St., 559 
Vision, 87, 368, 397 
illuminated, 282, 304 seg. 
fourfold, 310 
Visions, 79, 93, 236, 289, 307, 319 seq., 
334 5€9.5 447, 454 
dynamic, 164, 348 seg. 
examples, 131, 218, 220, 226, 302, 341 
ség., 483 seq. 
true, 323 seg. 
evil, 324, 468 
and voices, 338 
of Godhead, 131, 340, 406, 441 
symbolic, 343 


"haa 


AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM 


Vitalism, 31 seg., 186 seg., 518 
Voices, see Auditions 
Von Crevelsheim, ‘Fllina, 441 
Von Hiigel, Baron F., 72, 95, 244, 296, 
322, 386, 419 
on St. Catherine of Genoa, 71, 220, 432 
on quietism, 388 


WalITE, A. E., 99, 111, 129, 141, 186 
on Magic, 181, 1&9, 194 e 
Weigel, 356 
Whichcote, B., 559 
Whitman, Walt, 232, 286, 299, 306 
Will, 53 seg., 82, 187 seg., 193 seg., 198, 
362, 388, 395, 468, 474 
and magic, 84, 183, 190 
purgation of, 206, 472, 477 
and conversion, 227, 237 
surrender of, 252 
in orison, 359, 371, 374, 376, 379, 394, 
448 
Wolf of Gubbio, 312 
Word, The, 131, 138, 142, 233, 281, 
293, 310, 384, 390, 396, 406, 499, 
506 
Words, see Auditions 
Wordsworth, 286, 306, 342 


YESOD, 76, 186, 315 


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